HEALTH-CARE POLICY IN AN AGING CANADA - THE ALBERTA EXPERIMENT

Tensions and contradictions abound in health care policy in Canada in the 1990s, with Canadian public health care, the envy of many observer s throughout the world and the pride of Canadians, on the brink of des truction. Challenged by a number of forces, most notably public policy shifts, insistent rhetoric holds that drastic cuts are inevitable, th at universal health care is a luxury no longer affordable, and that th e health care funding crunch is related to population aging and the la rge and looming demands for health care by the elderly. Realities, how ever, contrast with this rhetoric. Nowhere in Canada has health care u ndergone as radical a change as in the Province of Alberta in the peri od since 1993. In this article, health care policy changes in Alberta are examined as an 'experiment' in Canadian health care restructuring using a socio-historical political economy approach, consistent with c ritical gerontology. Aging and the aged are found to be centrally invo lved and implicated in health care changes, but in ways different than those predicted in Canada prior to contemporary health care restructu ring.