Can Tories offer real change?
There’s nothing like an impending election for prompting a government to do what it should have done long ago. For instance, on Monday, while announcing a March 3 provincial election, Premier Ed Stelmach promised to eventually eliminate health-care premiums. Axing premiums is long overdue and easily within the government’s financial reach. As things stand now, Alberta is one of only three provinces to charge its citizens premiums for health care, even though we are the only province to have no debt. Unfortunately, the Conservatives are going to take four years to get rid of the much-hated tax. Stelmach hasn’t offered many details about how the premiums will be phased out, although he has said a quarter of the revenue would be cut in the first year. The premiums cost families $1,056 a year and individuals $528 (people with extremely low incomes can get their premiums reduced or waived). Eliminating premiums immediately would have been so much more impressive. Unfortunately, the delay on
