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I know what I and my fellow colleagues will and have always done: we will care for the patient regardless of their ability to pay. We will look past an uncaring bureaucratic government who tells us that the value of our doing this is exactly zero dollars. We will do the right thing.

My concern is not about how much pay I would receive for caring for this patient. My concern is about the utter disrespect the government is showing me and my colleagues on the front lines. My concern is around the growing distaste of having to work for a government that informs me that my training, my experience and expertise, and my time, are worth absolutely nothing to them.

In 20 years of practice, I have never turned a patient away due to a lack of health-care insurance, and I have always provided care knowing that I may not always be compensated for my efforts. Despite the UCP government’s actions to devalue my profession with ill-informed unilateral cuts, I will continue to help all those who present in a time of need.

I urge the minister of health to put an immediate stop to his ill-informed cuts and to meet with physicians to find less disastrous ways to save money within the health-care budget. The government should show some “good faith” in physicians by giving up their attack on important mechanisms created to protect marginalized patients, such as the good-faith billing coverage.

As I said, my colleagues and I are all going to do the right thing. It is time that the minister of health and the UCP government did the same.

Dr. Paul Parks is president, section of emergency medicine, at the Alberta Medical Association.