It’s extremely hard for any sort of collaboration between two groups when one group holds all the power and can unilaterally change the rules of their partnership.

And yet, since the introduction of Bill 21that’s exactly what the UCP government has done with physicians in Alberta.

The UCP has repeatedly said that their goal is to reduce costs, but they have continuously tried to make systemic changes to how health care is administered in our province.

On the other side, physicians have repeatedly acknowledged the need to find savings given Alberta’s economic situation, but are committed to making sure the public health care system remains intact.

To get a bit of a better understanding of the situation, I caught up with Dr Liana Hwang. Dr Hwang is a family physician with surgical obstetrical skills in Banff and Canmore who recently found herself in the position of having to advocate strongly for rural health care because of the governments approach to rural medicine.