How does a government cut essential health services in rural Alberta without anyone seeing their agenda? Simple — they act like OPEC and Russia.

The cuts and fee reductions imposed by Jason Kenney and Tyler Shandro of the United Conservative Party (UCP) have heavily targeted rural medicine and undermined the sustainability of rural practices. Rural obstetrics, emergency departments and “full-scope rural medicine” are no longer financially viable in Alberta.

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The results are that rural physicians are giving notice that they will be leaving after the pandemic and graduating rural physicians are refusing to set up shop in Alberta. The UCP has very efficiently and effectively killed rural medicine.

This decimation was neither accidental nor unintended, and the UCP’s two major reports show exactly how calculated their actions were.

Their first report, the MacKinnon Report, was all about swaying public opinion against doctors by painting physicians as overpaid and inefficient. The report was subsequently shown to have used cherry-picked data and outright erroneous data. The media exposed how the report was anything but “independent” right down to the UCP giving Janice MacKinnon her speaking points when releasing the report.

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After this character assassination of the physician community, the UCP released their second report, the Ernst and Young report. This report outlined the “need” to cut rural obstetrics programs, close or reduce operational hours of rural emergency departments and outright close some rural hospitals.

Of course, staying true to political manipulative tactics, the UCP is denying their intent to make such cuts by making them appear to be someone else’s desire and not theirs. If only this were true; their targeted decimation of the financial viability of rural practices show this was, and remains, their intent.

To fulfill this intent, the UCP used the same tactic that OPEC and Russia are currently using to decimate our energy sector; undercut the economic feasibility of rural physicians to operate in a rural setting, thereby forcing closures.

In a recent Calgary Herald article , Dr. Cian Hackett showed how the simple act of cutting stipends for obstetrics insurance singlehandedly removes the viability of rural obstetrics programs in Alberta. The UCP also removed the “overhead” portion of the rural emergency department (ED) fees. Rural physicians who work in EDs still have to operate their clinics and pay their staff while they’re working in the hospital. With these cuts, rural physicians cannot earn enough both to work in the ED and operate a clinic; they will be forced to choose.

As a result, rural EDs will close or have reduced hours (i.e. close at night, since it is not financially feasible for the physician to miss a day in clinic to sleep following a 24-hour ED shift).

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As a result, just like the Alberta energy sector, the business viability of rural medicine is destroyed. The UCP has achieved their intention to close rural EDs and reduce services while appearing not to be responsible so as to avoid any political fallout from their actions. Vladimir Putin would be impressed.

Don’t be fooled. The UCP’s actions have shown they do not value rural Albertans enough to support their health-care needs; rather, they view the needs of Alberta’s rural population to be subservient to those of Alberta’s urban population.

The end result? There is now two-tiered medicine in Alberta — urban versus rural. So, a memo to rural Albertans on behalf of the UCP: kindly get sick less as you will have even fewer doctors to serve you; don’t have babies; time your health crises to occur during business hours only; and, ideally, only get sick when you happen to be in the city.

Dr. Gage Seavilleklein is a rural physician in Alberta.