Danielle Smith of the Wildrose Party has been quoted extensively talking about health care in the Edmonton Journal and Globe and Mail, among others. The Wildrose is running on a platform of creating a two-tiered system of health care in Canada. They claim that offering private health care creates more options, reduces wait times and protects and strengthens public health care. Each one of these points is false and not backed by evidence from the science and health research community. I'm going to attempt to separate myth from fact in the paragraphs below. I hope you'll read more.

Myth: Private care reduces wait times

There's not much need for scare tactics by supporters of public medicare: Yesterday the Wildrose Party laid out a pretty clear plan for privatizing health care in Alberta.

Wildrose Party Leader Danielle Smith's news release touting the idea of a "wait-time guarantee" for medically necessary treatments and procedures is heavy on glittering promises ("Alberta families will have peace of mind") and short on technical details, but it boils down to a three-part plan for privatization:

1)    Starve the public system of funds.

2)    Pump public money into for-profit private health care corporations.

One in 10 Canadians are not able to adhere to their prescriptions due to the cost of prescription drugs, found Michael Law et al. in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. But more than just numbers, the study asked who are those one in 10 and found something truly troubling. The people in Canada who are the most unlikely to adhere to prescription medication due to cost are: those who do not have drug insurance (public or private), those who earn the lowest income ($20,000 or less), and those who are in the poorest health or have multiple conditions -- in other words, those who could benefit the most from pharmacare.

Our need for pharmacare

As many of you have likely seen, read or heard, the Council of the Federation -- which is made up of the first ministers from each province and territory -- met in Victoria, B.C. to discuss the 2014 health care accord and hopefully find common ground on their response to the federal government's unilateral move on financing the Canada Health Transfer.

Maude and I found ourselves beside Christy Clark in the middle of a media scrum when she announced optimistically that the first ministers had made some progress finding a common ground. What they did agree on was that the actions of Finance Minister Jim Flaherty in late December were "unprecedented and unacceptable" but it sounds like that was about it -- according to Alberta's Premier Alison.

Is there a link between the tar sands pipelines, the premiers' health conference, and Indigenous rights?

As Canada's premiers and territorial leaders met in Victoria this week to discuss the future of health care -- after the Conservative government pulled back from its medicare role -- no attention has been paid to Indigenous peoples at the talks. All that came out of the meetings were strong words towards Ottawa, and plans to set up working groups on finance and "innovation."

But rabble.ca spoke to two First Nations advocates outside the meeting who said they were outraged by the lack of Aboriginal consultation around the health-care talks.