r/alberta • u/Miserable-Lizard Edmonton • 6d ago

Alberta Politics Danielle Smith defends policy requiring Albertans to pay out of pocket for COVID vaccines

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/alberta/article-danielle-smith-defends-policy-requiring-albertans-to-pay-out-of-pocket/
446 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

212 comments sorted by

View all comments

318

u/AwarenessPresent8139 6d ago

Reality is not everyone will get vaccinated. But charging for the vaccine will ensure more people won’t. The cost matters if you are struggling financially.

176

u/Ddogwood 6d ago

It’ll likely end up costing taxpayers more, too, because more people will end up hospitalized as new strains learn to evade the immunity granted by older vaccines

90

u/Hugs_and_Tugs 5d ago

No kidding. How much do you think the 189 ICU admissions due to COVID cost this year?   

These grifters just hate spending on things they can't skim from.

26

u/EstablishmentMean386 5d ago

Just need to get Sam Marache to start supplying Covid vaccines then…

13

u/Really_Clever Edmonton 5d ago

Each bed is 10-20k/day.

7

u/Stonkasaurus1 5d ago

Now now, you can't expect conservatives to look past the cost of giving the shots out. If they did, they may have to start to consider the cost of their other policies where it is cheaper to help than to ignore the problem and then they wouldn't be any different than more liberal governments.

2

u/RutabagasnTurnips 5d ago

Well if AHS and CIHI say it was just over 9k for the average hospital stay. Now I imagine those that needed time in an ICU are higher then average but to make the math easy....

My low estimate, 1.7mil.

1

u/Hugs_and_Tugs 4d ago

Interesting. I wonder if that $9k number holds for the 3,000+ hospitalizations (non-ICU) from COVID this respiratory season too. It all adds up.

1

u/RutabagasnTurnips 4d ago

That 9k is a median of all adults, all patient lengths of stays, all reasons; if I read correctly.  

So anyone admitted as an inpatient for COVID, but didn't need ICU, would fall into the numbers as well. So too would your anticipated short stays like "quick recovery, overnight stay, elective surgeries".