In the last election, United Conservatives made a clear platform commitment to generate savings in our healthcare system so more resources could make it to patients and our front line services.
That included a plan to save hundreds of millions by moving laundry services by maintaining more efficient and competitive contracting for these services and making our healthcare system less manager heavy. The NDP on the other hand wanted to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on new laundry machines and for the government to nationalize laundry services in our healthcare system.
NDP ideology trumps common sense yet again, forcing taxpayers to spend up to $200 million on laundry facilities. https://t.co/LRd92rahDM
— Jason Kenney (@jkenney) August 18, 2016
By outsourcing work in our healthcare system in areas like housekeeping, food services, and laundry, taxpayers will see $600 million in ANNUAL savings that can be redirected to patient care.
The NDP claim these changes will result in “11,000” jobs lost in our health care system.
Here are the facts:
- Outsourcing providers for services like laundry and housekeeping does not mean a net reduction of employment, it means a change in employers
- Outsourcing contract services isn’t new. Under the NDP, 70 per cent of lab services and 68 per cent of laundry services were contracted out to private companies
- There are zero job losses for nurses or for other front-line clinical staff
- Alberta’s health care spending has increased more than $1.06 billion since the COVID-19 crisis started. Health care spending was maintained at $20.6 billion in Budget 2020
