Using renal dialysis as an example, [there are many more] I would like to point out that it doesn’t cost any more to have people who are receiving dialysis to be treated in smaller centres.

If 100 people need dialysis, they need to be treated somewhere, by someone. The equipment and the staff will be the same, no matter where they are being treated, here or at a major centre.

With people in High Prairie being shuttered in every possible direction but here, the money is simply being spent in other centres. The added cost is to the patient, who has to foot the bill for transportation.

Generally speaking, that is punitive. To make someone move to another town will not serve the common or any greater good. People who are aged, ill or both are not going to be able to put their shoulder to the wheel to make a fortune.

What will happen if the money they have scraped together is spent? It certainly is not cheaper to live in a larger centre and it will not completely eliminate transportation expenses. The trips to the hospital every second day will still cost something. Taking people from the area where they have likely spent most of their lives is mean, and does not save money.

Once, many years ago, when I got on the government’s case about something, they first whined they didn’t have the numbers I wanted and didn’t know where to find them. Then they sent me a list of what it would cost per day to look after someone in the various institutions in Alberta.

Now, it is obvious that keeping someone in an acute care facility will cost more [$6,000 a day in the Calgary Foothills Hospital] than an extended care [$249 in McLennan] but it also appeared that in general it was more economical to care for people in institutions in rural areas than in urban. They gave me that grudgingly and it wasn’t what I was asking for; but, it has come of use from time to time.

In closing, Jeff Burgar and Mac Olsen recently wrote articles about pollution. Neither offended me, but I did not leap onto my laptop to pen a furious reply. They were both right.

The little coffee things may seem a minor issue but when I first saw one I remembered thinking it was a waste.

And the contaminated ground on old filling station sites. It will not get cheaper in time to clean them up and for now the toxins are leaching into the ground water as we speak.

The common thread? None of these problems are going to go away just because we close our eyes and think real hard.

Eva Sartorius,
High Prairie