Danielle Smith's Universal Pharma Program - Ask Abe.

What is the allure of Danielle Smith and her NDP policies?

Did you know that her leadership platform currently advocates for both NDP and Trudeau-style campaign promises? Though Trudeau had mulled something similar he never had the cohones to implement it. So if Smith will do it, but Trudeau won’t, doesn't that mean she’s more liberal than Trudeau? And what mystifies me the most is why so many conservatives are so eager to push a variation of Jameer Singh’s vision of Canada onto Alberta?

The UCP is on the brink of being highjacked by an unstable silver tongue that’s leading us down a pathway of incremental communism. The federal NDP have long sought to legislate this socialist juggernaut that Danielle's promising, but have always been stifled by true conservatism. But Danielle has repackaged it and is proposing it with a slight twist, and now so-called progressive conservatives are suddenly infatuated with it. So, what is this policy sorcery we’re talking about?

The Federal NDP party has long advocated for a universal pharma care program where Canadians would receive free drugs. It has always been understood to be a far-left policy daydream.

Yet Danielle Smith is campaigning on it. What?? Where did she say that? Well, she is sneaky. She is advocating for a health care savings account on top of our existing Alberta health care. This personal health account will be topped up with government (aka taxpayer) money on a yearly bases, to a tune of 300 dollars per year per person. And it can only be spent on health-related costs. I envision that number to quickly grow by many factorials over the coming decades. Fiscally, it almost sounds like Trudeau’s Covid money handouts.

Even Rachel Notley didn’t envision the success she could have had if she repackaged a pharma plan in this way. It’s all about the marketing to trick the proletariat into voting for free stuff, and when they’re opiated on government handouts they’ll smack you with a bigger socialist bludgeon and take away your remaining freedom.

Niesayers will say it isn’t only for pharma. Sure, you can spend your money on other health conscience things as well, but it must be recognized that it is a program that will pay for your drugs and drugs will be what it’s predominately used for. You can call it whatever you want but if it pays for pharma it’s a pharma program. But let's envision what else this program will enable us to waste our tax money on (and I speculate here on the generality of its messaging): Tea leaf readings? Chelation therapy? Sex therapy? Acupuncture? Touch therapy? Faith healers? Tarot card readings? You can justify just about anything in a holistic pseudo-medical framework. I prefer tax money being spent on things that are scientifically verified to work. This program allows occult-based folk medicine to be publically funded by our government. As such, this program de-westernizes our scientifically proven standards and allows pseudo-science to invade our funding models. Some call this pseudo-science, some call it cultural relativism, and some call it being woke. At the end of the day, it’s a closet pharma program with relativistic overtones.

Another NDP policy currently being parroted on the CBC is the need for universal dental. Not surprisingly, this socialist program is already anticipated to be covered in our proposed Alberta health accounts. Danielle Smith is on the eve of creating a universal dental program in conjunction with her pharma program: they’re both wrapped up into the same funding model. Do UCP voters really want universal dental? Do they generally vote to increase the size of our government with new or expanding government agencies? Yet, Danielle Smith’s healthcare accounts will pay for your dental! Overall, she is proposing Walmart versions of NDP policies. This is strategic and meant to get the policy through the doorway; something the NDP can’t seem to do. Once implemented, they will start printing more and more money to fund this pandora’s box. How long until daycare is included to alleviate mental health? Could these accounts be expanded into a universal daycare program?

So let's say Danielle Smith wins and becomes premier. She follows through on her promise and creates these healthcare savings accounts. But what happens in the next election when Notly campaigns on quadrupling the funding for those same accounts and becomes premier? Do Smith-ites understand what they’re asking for? They’re normalizing socialist spending and giving the government more venues to waste our money and entice greedy voters. Even if you trust Smith to control spending on this, do you trust Notly?

Let's hypothetically say that the funding will never increase. So how much money is Danielle Smith currently proposing to take from our over-taxed workers? She says she will spend an additional $300/per person. Alberta has 4.11 million people. That would come to $1.23 billion/year. Smith will increase our budget by $1.23 billion/year. And that doesn’t include the bureaucracy to create and maintain it!! She sounds like Trudeau who once campaigned on making our deficit bigger.

The next question involves the nature of these governmental bank accounts. Are they through private institutions like the banks, or is the government moving to hold our money and control our spending? I can see how this could quickly shift into a digital currency in a state bank; like we see unfolding in China. This program normalizes government-controlled bank accounts and can be expanded to include other areas of spending. A state bank digital currency is a bad idea and a scary slippery slope.

Finally, do you remember when Danielle wanted to withhold money from Christian schools that didn’t accept gay clubs? So now we have her creating a government health account. Now if the government is pro-abortion or pro-transition therapy, what if we have a Christian doctor or a Catholic hospital that is against transition surgery on religious grounds? It seems to me that Danielle could defund them as well, so that a religiously minded individual couldn’t use their health savings account to procure the services of these health professionals and institutions. It’s the same scenario as in the school system. The government should not have control of our money and dictate what we can spend it on.

One last point, The irony of this proposed legislation astounds me. Danielle Smith is having campaign success by positing herself as an anti-pharma anti-vax champion. Yet, her campaign is promising to implement a policy that will funnel billions of dollars into big pharma’s ever-expanding pockets. This program is so pro-pharma that it’s surprising they didn’t dictate it to Smith themselves!  You can’t have it both ways Danielle, you can’t twitter that you hate vaccine mandates while simultaneously creating laws to enrich vaccine manufacturers, who in turn will lobby the UCP for future mandates.

Or maybe I’m just crazy,

Ask Abe.