We have to address the doctor shortage to improve access
By Lethbridge Herald on November 28, 2025.
Editor,
A recent letter published in the Herald claimed the UCP government was “destroying our public health car system”, that medical professionals were being lured to “unneeded” and “unwanted” private health care facilities, and that perhaps a solution is to “lay down in front of bulldozers trying to build more private health care facilities at the expense of excellent health care…”
Almost everyone this person talked with knew of someone unable to find a family doctor. Apparently, this is all the fault of the prevailing government. So, I went to the internet to find if anyone else on Carl Sagan’s pale blue dot had similar troubles finding a family doctor.
No matter where I checked from Iceland to South Africa, the problem was the same – a significant portion of the population could not secure a family doctor. In Canada, about one in five or 20 per cent have difficulty finding a family doctor, and we’re in good shape comparatively.
Distance from large urban areas seems to be a common denominator no matter where I searched. Seems doctors, like a very large percentage of populations everywhere, want to live and work in cities.
Other reasons for doctor shortages cited were administrative burdens, lack of job satisfaction, supply failing to meet increasing demand = burn-out, aging populations, and declining interest in principle care residencies and more. Hmm, interesting, I thought: “declining interest”!
Well, it seems that the attraction for a good many health care professionals lay well beyond the headaches of a government controlled single payer model, where billions are thrown around like a red rubber ball and wait times grow longer, and complaints grow louder.
Veterinary medicine is attracting former family doctors, particularly in countries where socialised medical care dominates their lives, like in Canada.
Some doctors are fed-up being told how to run their professions, their lives and their futures. In veterinarian medicine, the payee presumably gladly (the patient is a valued family member -right?) pays for the crazy costs of the MRI, the surgery, the toothpaste and the bandages.
And the best part is the patient doesn’t complain that the government in the wheelhouse at the moment is totally responsible for the outrageous costs, lack of medical professionals, the wait period, or the pain!
Alvin W. Shier
Lethbridge
13-12
I’ve read some bonkers stuff in my time but this letter is… up there. Doctors in countries with socialized medicine are becoming vets? If you’re going to just fabricate claims, at least make them somewhat believable. Those are entirely different fields that you can’t just casually transfer between.
As to people paying gladly for veterinary care – what you mean is wealthy people pay gladly. Poor people’s pets just die because they can’t afford the treatment. Maybe this makes me a woke radical, but I think that sounds like a bad approach to human medicine.
Everyone who woke up this morning and read this letter is less informed and probably nursing a migraine. A few more letters like this and I’ll be finding out first hand how Alberta’s new pay for access healthcare is working out.
Socialists plenty in South Alberta come to defend what doctors are leaving over, if they leave to become animal doctor or choose another medical place but family doctor. Same all over the world like editorial says. Cannot figure out why so many socialists in this part of the country. Bad stuff when government controls people in this way. Who benefits when no choice.
i assume what your experience was had to do with totalitarian oligarchy, not with an actual social state. your outlook seems to reek of the likes of russia and eastern european states where democracy is an utter farce, and not the likes of canada and the states of northern europe, the latter of which that tend to have the happiest people enjoying the highest quality of life.
Ha ha, highest quality of life you are kidding. do you travel I once thought Canada was freedom and democracy as you still do. I suggest you by plane ticket to place you talk about and check out. You will be surprised people moving to Russia and Bulgaria even Ukraine – surprises me. Don’t ask your socialist friends ask people moving out of this country in big numbers – why? they cannot afford to work for government until July every year each year. one reason.
well shared
Anyone who has applied for extended health benefits insurance as an individual and with a pre-condition, knows what dealing with private-sector insurers is like. This is not where we want to go relative to primary healthcare insurance.
an honest look at the usa model gives us plenty to support your point – insurers ever dropping coverage on people paying high premiums, due to sundry loopholes. thus, when people really need coverage for expensive things, they find they are not covered. they can try the route of lengthy and further very expensive legal action, or they can just suffer and/or die; so very many instances of families having been bankrupted due to dirty insurers.
Remember the CEO for a health insurance company in USA who was shot? The murderer was a client (patient) of that company.
Read somewhere about over 20% of its claims were denied.
It is cruel when you are sick or destitute and your claim is denied, and you have to fight the 1-800 number to honor your claim.
Don’t let Danielle get her ugly claws on our “socialist” health care system.
Show me the evidence that former MDs are now practising veterinarians in this country. Medics coming from overseas and who subsequently underwent the standard training and licensing exams , are not the same thing as I think you are suggesting.
But please, provide the evidence , otherwise your monologue is moot.
Our healthcare system is far from perfect and Smith is doing everything to privatize it with no proof that these changes have or will improve it. In fact, some changes have been a disaster. We do need more healthcare professionals and public facilities which require our govt to prioritize instead of adding costs that will have no positive impact to patient care. Yes our current govt has done nothing to improve healthcare but their actions have made it worse.