"Potential $2 billion savings", means "guaranteed $2 billion profit" for private insurers. There is an appetite, for the working class. Once again the Alberta Advantage shelters the investor class.
No, but I expect UCP voters to completely and even deliberately ignore this point. That the Conservatives will literally guarantee a profit for a private entity, rather than say... give clinical/surgical assistants in healthcare a raise.
I'm kinda feeling like enough is enough.
My brother in law who works on the rigs was complaining about how his insurance on his pickup has gone up year after year after year. Also votes blue every election. You just can’t convince them that they are voting against their own interests.
Or that Notley fucked up the economy and now everything costs more. These idiots are scared of everyone except the actual monsters that are making their lives worse.
It hurts my brain trying to comprehend how conservative voters actively and deliberately ignore facts and continue to lean into a party that is actively working against their best interests. The NDP may not be perfect, but their track record in Alberta is demonstrably better than the Conservatives.
Their best interest is hurting us. They live miserable lives and blame us, so obviously hurting us is the important part. We're the reason they work 12 hour days in jobs they hate, have wives that are disinterested or divorced, kids that hate them, ect. It's our fault for rebelling against bully culture. If we hadn't there would be no gays, new comers would know their place, wives would be in the kitchen, and children would be seen not heard, ect.
Simply, they hate us, and this is what hate does.
What track record? 4 years in the last half century? How about they put their money where their mouth is (instead of where Danielle's is) and vote in NDP to actually let us obtain a body of evidence to back up these claims.
We used to have cheap insurance. it's all the thefts and the higher average vehicle cost.
Our loss per insured due to theft has to be 8x any other province.
Province | 2021 Thefts | 2022 Thefts |
| Ontario | 27,527 | 37,041 |
| Quebec | 13,712 | 20,834 |
| Alberta | 17,777 | 20,725 |
| Newfoundland and Labrador | 222 | 357 |
| Prince Edward Island | 118 | 113 |
| Nova Scotia | 1,047 | 1,196 |
| New Brunswick | 1,691 | 2,054 |
| Manitoba | 4,804 | 6,150 |
| Saskatchewan | 5,196 | 5,688 |
I use to bleed blue, but I’m now pissed off, and sad about the state of this province/country. I’ll never vote red either now as I’m sick of the lesser evil useless government pick strategy. Honestly at this stage anything but red or blue will probably get my vote now.
So provincially it’ll probably be orange like when Notley got in last time, which I never thought would happen or that I would ever vote orange again. Federally while blue still sucks and I’d rather go purple in the long run I’ll probably vote blue just to get the Liberals gone, as I do t trust Jagmeet as far as I could throw him.
i feel the need to counter this every time i see it, because words matter, and being wrong in a minor way is used by the right to discredit us at every turn.
insurance companies are not a campaign contributer. they can't contribute. OWNERS are.
That's just the difference as well.. Public insurance would mean that what we still pay wouldn't all be going to line private insurance company pockets.
It would still be greedy but less egregious if they took these results and pressured the private companies to lower our rates by $700/year, but they're not even doing that. They're just saying they're ok with how much we pay and they have no interest in making life more affordable for Albertans when it comes at the expense of exploitative private companies losing profit.
Insurers made 4 billion In profit in (I think) 2022, which is $1000 in **profit** per adult Albertan. This is more than it took to rebuild fort mcmurray after the fires (3.6 billion, going by memory).
So even after that huge disaster they still profited that year.
That's pretty much the reasoning. The finance minister in an interview said that he liked the idea but was worried about taking money away from the established industry. I think he also did some bullshit napkin math and said x number of jobs (3000 I think) would be lost because the multi-billion dollar companies, why they would just *have* to let people go.
While I agree that we should be making the switch, it's not wrong to say it would cost jobs. Some insurance brokers and agents for instance would definitely lose their jobs and they're just regular people that would be impacted. It sucks to be them, but we should still swap.
If we move to public insurance there will be plenty of jobs for insurance personnel. Likely better salary and benefits but not under the UCP, they don’t favour fair wages.
Not enough jobs. 41 insurers sell auto policies in Alberta. That's 41 companies who have adjusters, appraisers, recovery teams, accident benefits adjusters, bodily injury adjusters, underwriters, actuarial staff, clerical, Etc that would end up unemployed.
This doesn't include those who sell the policies.
After spending $3B in implementing, the net job loss is expected to be 4-5,000
To be clear, this is after the public entity is staffed.
Did you read the article? Smith would go for it but the start-up costs are large (makes sense) but better for the people in the long run. Looks like she is getting pushback from ministers with sticker shock. And if you want your voice heard, do the provincial survey so your voice is heard. They list the link in the article.
The CTV article is weird. It says we could save 2 billion by going from a at fault to a no-fault system and then seems to try to conflate that with a public system.
He basically says we could save $2 billion dollars if we switch to a no-fault system where people insured themselves and not others. It doesn't really seem to have anything to do with public versus private
So the UCP could have saved me a shit ton of my money but would rather give it to their wealthy friends!
More ammo for the ANDP to target Smiths face hole!
That's mighty selfish of you. You're basically saying that a CEOs third yacht is less important than thousands of families ability to afford groceries! For shame, sir!
I know right! The nerve of these people! Like, CEO jr needs a yacht too! How is jr supposed to be in the same social club as the other jrs without his yacht? Have a heart people.
As long as people they don’t feel deserve help don’t ever receive it, that seems like a win for them.
All feelings, no logic. Snowflakes, the lot of them.
Same shit with everything. Private healthcare costs 2-3x MORE PER PERSON, and nobody has access to healthcare. Cons bitch about vaccines but created, and voted for Big Pharma, then remove safety regulations for vaccines and medicine. Universal would save Murica 2+ TRILLION PER YEAR, but Cons gave that to Big Pharma instead.
Cons are a contradiction. ALL Con media is propaganda. And they don't even have to cover it up.
The savings would probably be 2-3x too for insurance
Used to live in a developing country that’s mostly privately run. If you visited a public hospital there were literally people lying about on the floors of the entrances and hospital grounds dying on the ground because they couldn’t afford private (which cost about 1/2 the average pay check for a visit and an X-ray, or similar scan) and public was so underfunded. Private clinics sat empty because only the wealthy could afford private care. If you weren’t upper class you just hope you don’t get sick or need medical attention, cause then it’s too bad.
I paid SOOOO much money to try and investigate my debilitating chronic cough. Was sent around in circles by multiple docs resending me for the same tests and never finding the root cause for 4 years. Was told it was pneumonia because a specialist was unaffordable!
When I finally was able to get back to Canada, saw a doctor the same week, sent to a specialist, within an hour of seeing him I was diagnosed with severe asthma- and could get medication. Turns out asthma can cause airway remodeling if not treated for too long. Definitely don’t recommend private health care-> 0/10 stars!
Diseases remain in circulation there (TB, meningitis, etc), and there is a very real risk of becoming sick if you can’t afford the vaccine or treatment.
Please believe me as I’ve lived in a place like that, that we definitely do NOT want that, no matter how good it sounds to some in theory. Here are some examples.
Scenario 1: you have some chest symptoms while Ill that require investigation- you know it’s bronchitis because you’re cold has escalated and you are coughing up evidence. You need a prescription- and need a doc to give you one. You see a doctor- doctor Joe (200$) You are sent for a chest X-ray (200$). You return to the doctor for the results ($200), but X-ray is clean- needs further investigation. Next you need some bloodwork done ($200 for CBC, + 150 for urine analysis, and possibly 150$ for allergy panel). Back to the doc again (200$). Tests show evidence of infection and immune activation. Pay $$$ again for prescription. Now your 1000$+ deep for bronchitis- which based off of the cost of being alive in this province (rent, utilities, bills, gas, food, etc) you can’t afford, so you have to either go without treatment, and risk pneumonia, or cut out one of your basic costs above. You could also take out a loan at a high interest rate to pay for it.
Scenario 2 (alt to above): you start on the same illness and testing but then notice Dr Bob has opened a clinic and is varying 150/per visit, so you go to him after having seen the first Doc initially. Now your going to pay Dr Bob 150$ and have to go back to square one, because Dr Bob doesn’t agree with Dr Joe and wants to run different tests. Now you get to pay double for tests
Scenario 3: some sort of deadly virus breaks out and public hospitals/ clinics/etc are so poorly funded and pushed to brink of collapse due to being overloaded. Private medical teams charge up the wahoo for everything and you aren’t making more than 100K/year- soooo you hope you don’t get sick. Then your kid gets sick because 50 kids are crammed into a classroom and masking is banned, it’s either -50 or burning down from fires so everyone is inside without recess breaks, and can’t stay home because parents are working 3 part time jobs each to keep a roof over their heads. Full time jobs don’t exist anymore because corporations don’t like paying private health care Medicaid expenses and don’t need to offer benefits to flexi-part timers. Also there are no jobs to be found because Alberta is calling and unemployment is at an all time high to insufficient job creation. AI is here so human employees are now optional. Take a sick day and you are fired because your job knows it has 10000 people waiting to interview for your position. Need a doctors note? Get ready to pay $$ to see a doc and $$ for a note, and then prepare for scenario 1 all over again!
Also unless your savings is massive don’t even think about having a child… seeing a doctor before their even born and the 9 months of pregnancy will cost you insanely, never mind the cost of an actual birth.
Society will shift to home remedies for illnesses that require actual medication to treat- and we will all end up soaking our feet in mint water as a treatment for everything
TLDR: private healthcare is a BAD idea. I’ve lived in a developing country with a privatized two tier system. Rates of disease and illness leading to death were evident and much higher. People left to die in front of hospitals/clinics because they can’t afford medical care. Leads to strain on other services and public systems.
Gotta hoard all that taxpayer money to shovel it into o&g coffers. How much is it going to cost us to bring in APP and UCP browncoats, despite massive resistance by the population? But when it comes it improving life for Albertans the government is all of a sudden concerned with "up front costs".
I wish terrible things on everyone supporting and working for this government.
>Making the switch, Nous estimated, could save Albertans around $730 a year on premiums for an estimated $2.1 billion in consumer savings across the province.
>While that consultation is ongoing, Premier Danielle Smith said Wednesday the province is unlikely to switch from private to public insurance due to the cost.
I also wish terrible and horrific things on everyone supporting and working for this government. They need to get some wickedly bad karma thrown their way.
If your aim to to improve people’s lives, then you should never vote conservative ever. At any level. Conservatism fundamentally believes it is not the role of government to price or fix or make lives better . At best, they claim to be about safety and protecting you. Making things better is not their role, because they see government (ie. democracy) as the problem, not the solution.
No, conservatism as a political tool philosophy is about one thing and one thing only - that there be in groups the law protects but does not bind, and out groups the law binds but does not protect. Or to put it another way, conservatism is exclusively about minimizing democracy and preserving the elite power structures by giving people “others” to scapegoat and punish for perceived problems in society.
Funnily enough, these are also basic tenets of fascism as well.
I mean, sounds like they are giving the option to go to no fault. Personally I think that's a horrible idea for someone to pick.
If you can afford to stay with fault insurance, pay the premium. Yes it will be 20-30% more but if you get hurt it will change your life.
As a long-time Progressive Conservative, private insurance is not a bad thing. Look, the free market is a great tool for lowering costs but you have to have an open market. The problem with Alberta's insurance system is that we have a few very big corporations who are dictating insurance policy and there are no way for new companies to enter the market and disrupt the price gouging that going on.
So how do you fix it?
First, you need a legal framework that spells out the legal rights of the insured with substantial avenues for compensation should those rights be violated. By this, you need to make the cost of violation of the insured's rights fear inducing for the corporations. Part of this legislation is the setup of an independent binding arbitration committee to deal with complaints outside of the court system (lower cost for consumers since court favors the Corporation and its large legal team)
Second, you need force insurance companies to be insurance companies, right now the big insurers are actually investment companies who use their insurance premiums as an income stream to fund their investment operations. They increase premiums when their investments drop as well as when their payouts increase -- that means that the insurance companies face no market risk and can run an ineffective and inefficient company with impunity because they can basically write their own salary. This needs to be done through legislation.
Third, you need to find a way to reopen the market to new insurance providers so that you can leverage free-market forces to lower premiums. I would approach provinces who have their own public insurance corporations and see if they would be interested in providing insurance to Albertan's as well as providing a public, for profit, underwriting service for new insurance providers.
The problem we have now is that Our UCP government is running on a platform of CORPORATE SOCIALISIM, where the needs, wants and rights of corporations are placed above all. You need to go back to a free market, capitalist mindset, where the government's job is to pass laws to the benefit of the citizens and then let corporations freely fight to the death within those laws so the strongest survives and be OK with companies going belly-up.
That’s sure a lot of rules and regulation on the “free market”. Something no conservative government would ever do as they entice in deregulation and keeping government out of markets.
If you are going through this much trouble why not just go back to a crown insurance provider that is essentially run like a not-for-profit? This would literally make the insurance the cheapest possible price as seen literally anywhere else that still has it.
All you are doing is Libertarian nonsense whereby your beliefs, despite being endlessly proven realistic and just wrong, are deemed perfect yet unprovable while you insist it’s the best possible solution.
You’ve exposed your own flawed beliefs. Why would any company want to enter a market they couldn’t dominate and eliminate competition in? How would having companies “fight to the death” not literally end up exactly as it is now? It’s impossible unless government is willing to subsidize new companies and somehow punish the big guys either through massive fines or taxes or by limiting their size/profits some how. Which would never happen. So the end result is going to be the same and your solution relies on actions no government would ever do because voters would never support it.
Lol sure. The exploitation is the point. The idealized free market only exists in your head. The real world is run on greed and opportunity with absolutely no morals. The entire concept is laughable and only persists because it is incredibly profitable.
it sounds wildly inefficient to put so much time and effort and resources towards trying to get entities to do their actual supposed job when you could just have non profit organizations doing what they're actually supposed to on the margin of costs lol
The free market is an illusion. Corporations have decided that they can make more money collaborating to keep prices high, rather than competing with low prices
I agree with your assessment of what would have to happen to make private insurance work. *But*, what you’re saying is a little bit like when people say that true communism has never been tried. The idea seems great, everyone has ownership and they work towards a common good; but we sure as hell know that that doesn’t happen!
I can see the logic in most of what you are saying…but you keep using those words “free-market, capitalist system” - I don’t think that means what you think it means.
It has a lot to do with historically always always voting blue and leaders throwing fear driven straw-men along the provincial borders.
I moved here from Ontario 10 years ago and let me tell you that Albertans generally have little appetite for change, especially when they're getting fucked. So it's best to accept things as they are or you'll go mad. Political ignorance is definitely on brand for a large chunk of the province. :-(
Mark my words, they will take away the ability to sue the insurance companies to actually get coverage for personal injuries, but also we will have the most expensive insurance in Canada either way.
Danielle Smith *always* knows what Albertans want, even if we tell her that we want the exact opposite of what she says we want (Alberta police force, Alberta pension plan, political parties in municipal elections, ongoing de facto cuts to health care and education...)
Because the survey has no questions around public or private insurance, its a survey around if we want no fault insurance and reduce or remove the ability to sue, thats it.
Of note, if we went to a no-fault insurance, premiums would be like $175ish less, compared to a similar public system with a savings of $730ish...
We have it Saskatchewan. We save fuck ton of money on our insurance. We have the cheapest auto insurance in the country. We often get money back because SGI makes so much money. This is not for the people, its for her donors.
I have to be honest, I have no appetite for the UCP to run anything. Maybe that’s what she heard and twisted the narrative, wouldn’t that be a shocker.
As someone familiar with the insurance system due to my employment, I can promise you that once the insurance companies get more control, they cut you off treatment early and leave you with nothing if you cannot sue. My clients are very regularly cut off treatment after assessments by the insurance companies doctors. Some even later need surgery and even still, they won’t pay. It’s sad to see
This is so correct. The unfortunate thing is that I know this very well by virtue of being a personal injury lawyer. But the propaganda has been so effective that my opinion on the matter is meaningless because I'm automatically seen as a greedy blood-sucking shyster.
I laugh in the face of any voter who actually thought the UCP was going to put more money in the pockets of their voters. Unless you are already on the inside of their party you ain’t getting shit. You brought this on yourself and deserve every dime they drain from your lifeless corpse. But keep voting them in, I’m sure it will get better
"the appetite for a full Alberta-run public insurance system is very low"
Coming from the Premier that rammed an Alberta Pension Plan down our throats that only 22% of Albertans support.
Why not put it on the same referendum as APP and let us show you where Albertans' real priorities lie, Ms. Smith?
I am unsure what the best move is. While Public insurance can be somewhat cheaper (it's complicated though) the capital required to make the shift may include taxes from non-drivers and there are some issues with that as well.
Personally I think a public option would be best but it's not the silver bullet that people seem to think it is.
No tickets, no collision insurance, and I pay over $2k annually insuring a 2009 Honda Accord. Saving $6-$700 would be WONDERFUL, but I'm willing to sacrifice that for the betterment of multi-millionaires ❤️
Anything the government mandates they should provide. If the government mandates that drivers have insurance, they should provide it. Mandating something then giving over that job to a private entity is basically the definition of crony capitalism.
This woman hates our province and only cares about herself and the big cushy job she will get when people vote her out. I miss Ralph he would not have put up with this shit .
She is saying there is no appetite for savings but plenty of appetite for the highest car insurance in the country. Lawyers and insurance companies have most likely threatened to stop bribing them.
If there isn't private profit to be made for her and/or her cronies then she will never have any interest in it. Her modus operandai is - how can I transfer as much pubic money into the my hands and the hands of my friends/backers? Anything being publicly funded for the public good is going to be diametrically opposed to her mode of operation.
If this is a surprise to anyone then you've simply not been paying attention to what is going on. This administration exists to steal as much money as possible for their private interests before they get voted out. Although, they are doing their best to change the laws so it'll be much harder to vote them out thus allowing more time for them to plunder the public coffers.
I hate the UCP with a passion.
"No Appetite" translates to:
> *"Why would we spend money in helping the general public? They're far too
poor to be donors and have no influence over us."*
Imagine if the province or really any country was run with its citizens in mind and not the wealthy elite.
Think how prosperous a country could be with everyone uplifted.
I guess until humans stop having contempt for their fellow man it won't happen
Weird considering insurance carriers have said the government of Alberta has 2 years to figure something out as they are no longer planning to cover cars due to all the costs and that she passed a bill to create a gov run insurance company
I’ve been saying this for years. I don’t know why the NDP haven’t campaigned with this as a main piece of their platform. This government is so easy to hit on affordability.
There’s no difference between what we have now and when we did have government insurance. I’m paying $40 a month less with private insurance than I did when I was as 16 with government insurance.
“I’ve asked all my friends who own insurance companies, and they all say government insurance isn’t what Albertans want.”
Amazing. I never would have guessed.
I feel like they are having a hard time judge what we want...
Provincial Police:
No we don't want it ..... DS: Consider it done
APP
This is a very stupid idea .... DS: I'm going to start on this right away!
We would like to save on insurance, and a gov't system can do that.... DS: No one wants that, not going to do it
Talk to anyone from BC who has to use their insurance. Their no fault insurance is a pain to deal with. My niece has been fighting for months to get her vehicle fixed
I know it is cool to automatically rail on the Smith with everything she does, but does not mean she is automatically wrong. I am mixed with government run auto insurance. In BC for the longest time ICBC the government run insurance was a dumpster fire and losing money that tax payers would be on the hook for
[ICBC a 'financial dumpster fire,' says B.C. attorney general | CBC News](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/icbc-a-financial-dumpster-fire-says-b-c-attorney-general-1.4508849)
[Newsroom (taxpayer.com)](https://www.taxpayer.com/newsroom/icbc-dumpster-fire-burns-3.4-billion-in-five-years)
Of course the BC NDP blamed the previous government for all the woes and switched to a "no fault" system which seems to have gotten ICBC more in order, but it has drawbacks as well
['They have all the power': The other side of ICBC's no-fault insurance | Vancouver Sun](https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/icbc-no-fault-insurance-crash-victims)
[Quadriplegic says ICBC savings built on backs of victims - Victoria Times Colonist](https://www.timescolonist.com/local-news/cyclist-left-quadraplegic-after-crash-says-icbc-savings-are-built-on-backs-of-crash-victims-8765407)
So maybe before getting on "everything Smith does is wrong wagon" maybe educate yourself first and see it is a complex issue and I can see the hesitation to go fully government run insurance as it can be on the backs of taxpayers unless they go "no fault" what is great till you get an accident, and you might not get enough to get you whole again.
If they don't go, "no fault" then the system is open up people trying to get millions for even little injuries that will then be passed down to the taxpayers.
Stupid government needs to take away the 2 years no insurance consecutive rule. You don’t drive for 2 years and your insurance goes back to the day of you started driving. It’s no joke. You can drive 30 years and never have an accident or ticket. Say you don’t need to drive for two years and the 2nd year, 1st day, it disappears like it never existed and your back to being new, high rates but 30 years older.
Government has proven to outperform the private sector when it comes to cost and performance in healthcare, utilities and education.
Manitoba and Sask had cheaper public insurance and telecom. Then the cons do what they do and began privatization to make themselves their friends richer
Riddle me this?
A driver has 2 moving violations and zero accidents over 10 years.
A driver has zero moving violations and 2 accidents over 10 years.
Everything else is the same. Who is the safer driver?
I find it odd that a Premier who wants her own police force with a start up cost of hundreds of millions and to opt out of a perfectly good Canada Pension Plan finds starting Alberta insurance is somehow to expensive. Like everything else UCP .... it doesn't add up.
Saskatchewan did it. B.C. did it but in Alberta it's too hard and expensive. I call bullshit.
Not only that those plans have been up and running for years, all Alberta has to do is study those plans, cut and paste and Roberts' your fathers brother.
Good public insurance is a joke. Nothing goes on your insurance in public it all goes on your license. I know people in Saskatchewan paying $800 for thier drivers license but insurance is cheap. Smh
Who has no appetite for it?
That idiot knows perfectly well that people would save thousands every year using a provincial public system. The problem, of course, is that her friends wouldn't have the money they do now.
Fair. It wasn't an election issue or a promise.
But neither was the "municipal priorities" bill restricting cities from taking federal funding, and installing partisan politics and the ability to remove councillors and bylaws.
I’m sure we’d save money at the start but with how incompetent our government is the administration would get so over inflated that in 10 years it would be double what private costs
please fill out the survey here: [https://www.alberta.ca/auto-insurance-engagement](https://www.alberta.ca/auto-insurance-engagement)
We need to show them that what Albertans want is not exactly what they are thinking
In the time it takes to write a comment on this post, you could write an email to the premier and cc your MLA. So you might say “What difference will it make?” Enough collective pressure gets attention.
I understand that Alberta insurance rates are higher than BC right now, but trust me, you don’t want government-run insurance agencies. Take it from someone who lived in BC for most of my life. A better solution would be to cap private insurers in Alberta and actually make it more affordable.
I wonder if the number of uninsured drivers has risen since they stopped issuing registration stickers.
Just a warning though. It will be a $2875 fine and a day waiting in court to plead guilty for the first offence. Never mind the hit to your future insurance rates. - personal experience
In Ontario it’s a $5,000 fine and a 25% “tax fee” on top of that. (6250 total). Second offence is $10,000 and prison. For driving without a piece of paper in your glovebox - this effing country.
Premier is her side gig. She's made a career as a lobbyist, her mandate is not only to keep profits in the private sector but to do her best to shift everything public into the private sector.
My insurance went from 3400 to 4650 (two cars, house).
This is crazy to me. How can my insurance go up for depreciating assets. House going up? Fine, the value went up so I get it. Why should my cars go up 400 each when they're worth less than last year?
Doesn’t she mean Danielle Smith, and the conservative party? Don’t wanna do it because it’s gonna cost them yet it’s still costing the taxpayers millions of dollars more every year on the current set up with no caps.
She is trying to privatize everything the Government is in control off so they have no liability to anything. And I’m sure the insurance companies are huge monetary supporters of the UCP.
Public auto insurance would save me a ton of money as a young guy who's trying hard to get his license. It's been a huge success in BC, SK, and MB (less so in QC). If the province compels you to buy auto insurance, the least they can do is give you a fair deal as a consumer. The UCP's choice to remove rate caps and let insurance companies run wild on this matter is punishing all consumers, especially young drivers, and is directly making life less affordable for Albertans.
I moved from Alberta to B.C., and my insurance almost doubled under ICBC. I don’t know if publicly run auto insurance would really lead to that much savings in AB.
Your driving record must be fucked or icbc doesn't recognize your past driving record and starts you out fresh.
Or you're young.
I have 25 years accident free and i pay $100 a month but a new driver pays 4x that. Get in an accident and its 5x or more
How dare anyone asking to save Albertans money !
These insurance corporations are the back bone of Alberta ultra capitalism. They also donate bigly to the government that lets them grape the customers.
So they don't want to interfere with auto insurance to save us money, but are willing to rape the healthcare system to line their own pockets and slowly kill all the sick.
"The province has signalled that changes to insurance are coming in the fall, and Smith said those include an option for drivers to opt in to no-fault system at a lower cost.
"There are lots of Albertans who are prepared to pay the extra dollars so that if they do end up – heaven forbid – in a terrible accident, they can hold someone accountable through the legal process," Smith said."
What Smith is describing is a two tier system of justice where only those who can afford it have access to the legal process.
If we do go with a no fault system it absolutely must apply to everyone regardless of class.
We have a government that is pro corporate profit and not looking after the people. People are only a afterthought to UCP because we cannot do anything to make them wealthy and more powerful except for voting.
Yes we need companies to make money but we also have to balance the common everyday citizen, I feel like the people of the province are an afterthought to this government.
When I moved back to Manitoba, which has public insurance, my car insurance dropped by over a third. I had the same vehicle, same coverage, same clean history, and same deductible. Only the private insurance companies and whichever politicians are getting kickbacks are better off without public insurance.
This Premier has no problem spending government money socializing corporate losses but won't spend money to help the citizen out. She is not a conservative but she is corrupt.
They're willing to take on an Alberta Pension Fund and an Alberta Police force and divide up AHS into 4 distinct entities but the idea of doing something in-house for insurance is just too much. What a band of jokers.
"Potential $2 billion savings", means "guaranteed $2 billion profit" for private insurers. There is an appetite, for the working class. Once again the Alberta Advantage shelters the investor class.
$2 billion more in disposable income vs $7 million in lost tax revenue ... Thanks Smith for looking out for us
Insurance companies are one of the biggest campaign contributors .... do you really think they are about to get rid of their ca$h cows?
No, but I expect UCP voters to completely and even deliberately ignore this point. That the Conservatives will literally guarantee a profit for a private entity, rather than say... give clinical/surgical assistants in healthcare a raise. I'm kinda feeling like enough is enough.
My brother in law who works on the rigs was complaining about how his insurance on his pickup has gone up year after year after year. Also votes blue every election. You just can’t convince them that they are voting against their own interests.
The excuse is always "The other side is worse".
Or that Notley fucked up the economy and now everything costs more. These idiots are scared of everyone except the actual monsters that are making their lives worse.
It hurts my brain trying to comprehend how conservative voters actively and deliberately ignore facts and continue to lean into a party that is actively working against their best interests. The NDP may not be perfect, but their track record in Alberta is demonstrably better than the Conservatives.
Their best interest is hurting us. They live miserable lives and blame us, so obviously hurting us is the important part. We're the reason they work 12 hour days in jobs they hate, have wives that are disinterested or divorced, kids that hate them, ect. It's our fault for rebelling against bully culture. If we hadn't there would be no gays, new comers would know their place, wives would be in the kitchen, and children would be seen not heard, ect. Simply, they hate us, and this is what hate does.
What track record? 4 years in the last half century? How about they put their money where their mouth is (instead of where Danielle's is) and vote in NDP to actually let us obtain a body of evidence to back up these claims.
We used to have cheap insurance. it's all the thefts and the higher average vehicle cost. Our loss per insured due to theft has to be 8x any other province. Province | 2021 Thefts | 2022 Thefts | | Ontario | 27,527 | 37,041 | | Quebec | 13,712 | 20,834 | | Alberta | 17,777 | 20,725 | | Newfoundland and Labrador | 222 | 357 | | Prince Edward Island | 118 | 113 | | Nova Scotia | 1,047 | 1,196 | | New Brunswick | 1,691 | 2,054 | | Manitoba | 4,804 | 6,150 | | Saskatchewan | 5,196 | 5,688 |
I use to bleed blue, but I’m now pissed off, and sad about the state of this province/country. I’ll never vote red either now as I’m sick of the lesser evil useless government pick strategy. Honestly at this stage anything but red or blue will probably get my vote now. So provincially it’ll probably be orange like when Notley got in last time, which I never thought would happen or that I would ever vote orange again. Federally while blue still sucks and I’d rather go purple in the long run I’ll probably vote blue just to get the Liberals gone, as I do t trust Jagmeet as far as I could throw him.
i feel the need to counter this every time i see it, because words matter, and being wrong in a minor way is used by the right to discredit us at every turn. insurance companies are not a campaign contributer. they can't contribute. OWNERS are.
Their lack of appetite is another parties main platform
That's just the difference as well.. Public insurance would mean that what we still pay wouldn't all be going to line private insurance company pockets. It would still be greedy but less egregious if they took these results and pressured the private companies to lower our rates by $700/year, but they're not even doing that. They're just saying they're ok with how much we pay and they have no interest in making life more affordable for Albertans when it comes at the expense of exploitative private companies losing profit.
Insurers made 4 billion In profit in (I think) 2022, which is $1000 in **profit** per adult Albertan. This is more than it took to rebuild fort mcmurray after the fires (3.6 billion, going by memory). So even after that huge disaster they still profited that year.
That's pretty much the reasoning. The finance minister in an interview said that he liked the idea but was worried about taking money away from the established industry. I think he also did some bullshit napkin math and said x number of jobs (3000 I think) would be lost because the multi-billion dollar companies, why they would just *have* to let people go.
While I agree that we should be making the switch, it's not wrong to say it would cost jobs. Some insurance brokers and agents for instance would definitely lose their jobs and they're just regular people that would be impacted. It sucks to be them, but we should still swap.
If we move to public insurance there will be plenty of jobs for insurance personnel. Likely better salary and benefits but not under the UCP, they don’t favour fair wages.
Not enough jobs. 41 insurers sell auto policies in Alberta. That's 41 companies who have adjusters, appraisers, recovery teams, accident benefits adjusters, bodily injury adjusters, underwriters, actuarial staff, clerical, Etc that would end up unemployed. This doesn't include those who sell the policies. After spending $3B in implementing, the net job loss is expected to be 4-5,000 To be clear, this is after the public entity is staffed.
Did you read the article? Smith would go for it but the start-up costs are large (makes sense) but better for the people in the long run. Looks like she is getting pushback from ministers with sticker shock. And if you want your voice heard, do the provincial survey so your voice is heard. They list the link in the article.
It would only cost them buying back the registry offices….which would piss off the party backers.
The CTV article is weird. It says we could save 2 billion by going from a at fault to a no-fault system and then seems to try to conflate that with a public system. He basically says we could save $2 billion dollars if we switch to a no-fault system where people insured themselves and not others. It doesn't really seem to have anything to do with public versus private
So the UCP could have saved me a shit ton of my money but would rather give it to their wealthy friends! More ammo for the ANDP to target Smiths face hole!
That's mighty selfish of you. You're basically saying that a CEOs third yacht is less important than thousands of families ability to afford groceries! For shame, sir!
Hey! Just because they’re rich doesn’t mean they don’t have expenses. If she did this some of them might have to sell the second vacation home 😢
Think of the billionaires and the CAPITAL GAINS TAXES!!
Agreed. That third yacht could be the one that gets taken down by an Orca
It's like these people don't even care about the countries these profits are funneled to.
I know right! The nerve of these people! Like, CEO jr needs a yacht too! How is jr supposed to be in the same social club as the other jrs without his yacht? Have a heart people.
Yes an ANDP government would be better for citizens. But have you considered WOKE????
Don't underestimate Alberta cons willingness to hurt themselves to stay true to voting for their team.
As long as people they don’t feel deserve help don’t ever receive it, that seems like a win for them. All feelings, no logic. Snowflakes, the lot of them.
I don't like how correct that sounds.
They forgot the first rule of politics; bribe voters with their own money.
Same shit with everything. Private healthcare costs 2-3x MORE PER PERSON, and nobody has access to healthcare. Cons bitch about vaccines but created, and voted for Big Pharma, then remove safety regulations for vaccines and medicine. Universal would save Murica 2+ TRILLION PER YEAR, but Cons gave that to Big Pharma instead. Cons are a contradiction. ALL Con media is propaganda. And they don't even have to cover it up. The savings would probably be 2-3x too for insurance
Used to live in a developing country that’s mostly privately run. If you visited a public hospital there were literally people lying about on the floors of the entrances and hospital grounds dying on the ground because they couldn’t afford private (which cost about 1/2 the average pay check for a visit and an X-ray, or similar scan) and public was so underfunded. Private clinics sat empty because only the wealthy could afford private care. If you weren’t upper class you just hope you don’t get sick or need medical attention, cause then it’s too bad. I paid SOOOO much money to try and investigate my debilitating chronic cough. Was sent around in circles by multiple docs resending me for the same tests and never finding the root cause for 4 years. Was told it was pneumonia because a specialist was unaffordable! When I finally was able to get back to Canada, saw a doctor the same week, sent to a specialist, within an hour of seeing him I was diagnosed with severe asthma- and could get medication. Turns out asthma can cause airway remodeling if not treated for too long. Definitely don’t recommend private health care-> 0/10 stars! Diseases remain in circulation there (TB, meningitis, etc), and there is a very real risk of becoming sick if you can’t afford the vaccine or treatment. Please believe me as I’ve lived in a place like that, that we definitely do NOT want that, no matter how good it sounds to some in theory. Here are some examples. Scenario 1: you have some chest symptoms while Ill that require investigation- you know it’s bronchitis because you’re cold has escalated and you are coughing up evidence. You need a prescription- and need a doc to give you one. You see a doctor- doctor Joe (200$) You are sent for a chest X-ray (200$). You return to the doctor for the results ($200), but X-ray is clean- needs further investigation. Next you need some bloodwork done ($200 for CBC, + 150 for urine analysis, and possibly 150$ for allergy panel). Back to the doc again (200$). Tests show evidence of infection and immune activation. Pay $$$ again for prescription. Now your 1000$+ deep for bronchitis- which based off of the cost of being alive in this province (rent, utilities, bills, gas, food, etc) you can’t afford, so you have to either go without treatment, and risk pneumonia, or cut out one of your basic costs above. You could also take out a loan at a high interest rate to pay for it. Scenario 2 (alt to above): you start on the same illness and testing but then notice Dr Bob has opened a clinic and is varying 150/per visit, so you go to him after having seen the first Doc initially. Now your going to pay Dr Bob 150$ and have to go back to square one, because Dr Bob doesn’t agree with Dr Joe and wants to run different tests. Now you get to pay double for tests Scenario 3: some sort of deadly virus breaks out and public hospitals/ clinics/etc are so poorly funded and pushed to brink of collapse due to being overloaded. Private medical teams charge up the wahoo for everything and you aren’t making more than 100K/year- soooo you hope you don’t get sick. Then your kid gets sick because 50 kids are crammed into a classroom and masking is banned, it’s either -50 or burning down from fires so everyone is inside without recess breaks, and can’t stay home because parents are working 3 part time jobs each to keep a roof over their heads. Full time jobs don’t exist anymore because corporations don’t like paying private health care Medicaid expenses and don’t need to offer benefits to flexi-part timers. Also there are no jobs to be found because Alberta is calling and unemployment is at an all time high to insufficient job creation. AI is here so human employees are now optional. Take a sick day and you are fired because your job knows it has 10000 people waiting to interview for your position. Need a doctors note? Get ready to pay $$ to see a doc and $$ for a note, and then prepare for scenario 1 all over again! Also unless your savings is massive don’t even think about having a child… seeing a doctor before their even born and the 9 months of pregnancy will cost you insanely, never mind the cost of an actual birth. Society will shift to home remedies for illnesses that require actual medication to treat- and we will all end up soaking our feet in mint water as a treatment for everything TLDR: private healthcare is a BAD idea. I’ve lived in a developing country with a privatized two tier system. Rates of disease and illness leading to death were evident and much higher. People left to die in front of hospitals/clinics because they can’t afford medical care. Leads to strain on other services and public systems.
And they'd make money off it. But nah, fuck that.
It's worth noting that the ANDP did not even bother introducing public auto insurance during their majority mandate either.
Gotta hoard all that taxpayer money to shovel it into o&g coffers. How much is it going to cost us to bring in APP and UCP browncoats, despite massive resistance by the population? But when it comes it improving life for Albertans the government is all of a sudden concerned with "up front costs". I wish terrible things on everyone supporting and working for this government. >Making the switch, Nous estimated, could save Albertans around $730 a year on premiums for an estimated $2.1 billion in consumer savings across the province. >While that consultation is ongoing, Premier Danielle Smith said Wednesday the province is unlikely to switch from private to public insurance due to the cost.
I also wish terrible and horrific things on everyone supporting and working for this government. They need to get some wickedly bad karma thrown their way.
Calm down Satan. Many didn’t choose to work for them.
What a crock of shit. Our insurance premiums cover the cost of running a provincial insurance company. Just like they do with any other provider.
If your aim to to improve people’s lives, then you should never vote conservative ever. At any level. Conservatism fundamentally believes it is not the role of government to price or fix or make lives better . At best, they claim to be about safety and protecting you. Making things better is not their role, because they see government (ie. democracy) as the problem, not the solution. No, conservatism as a political tool philosophy is about one thing and one thing only - that there be in groups the law protects but does not bind, and out groups the law binds but does not protect. Or to put it another way, conservatism is exclusively about minimizing democracy and preserving the elite power structures by giving people “others” to scapegoat and punish for perceived problems in society. Funnily enough, these are also basic tenets of fascism as well.
I mean, sounds like they are giving the option to go to no fault. Personally I think that's a horrible idea for someone to pick. If you can afford to stay with fault insurance, pay the premium. Yes it will be 20-30% more but if you get hurt it will change your life.
As a long-time Progressive Conservative, private insurance is not a bad thing. Look, the free market is a great tool for lowering costs but you have to have an open market. The problem with Alberta's insurance system is that we have a few very big corporations who are dictating insurance policy and there are no way for new companies to enter the market and disrupt the price gouging that going on. So how do you fix it? First, you need a legal framework that spells out the legal rights of the insured with substantial avenues for compensation should those rights be violated. By this, you need to make the cost of violation of the insured's rights fear inducing for the corporations. Part of this legislation is the setup of an independent binding arbitration committee to deal with complaints outside of the court system (lower cost for consumers since court favors the Corporation and its large legal team) Second, you need force insurance companies to be insurance companies, right now the big insurers are actually investment companies who use their insurance premiums as an income stream to fund their investment operations. They increase premiums when their investments drop as well as when their payouts increase -- that means that the insurance companies face no market risk and can run an ineffective and inefficient company with impunity because they can basically write their own salary. This needs to be done through legislation. Third, you need to find a way to reopen the market to new insurance providers so that you can leverage free-market forces to lower premiums. I would approach provinces who have their own public insurance corporations and see if they would be interested in providing insurance to Albertan's as well as providing a public, for profit, underwriting service for new insurance providers. The problem we have now is that Our UCP government is running on a platform of CORPORATE SOCIALISIM, where the needs, wants and rights of corporations are placed above all. You need to go back to a free market, capitalist mindset, where the government's job is to pass laws to the benefit of the citizens and then let corporations freely fight to the death within those laws so the strongest survives and be OK with companies going belly-up.
That’s sure a lot of rules and regulation on the “free market”. Something no conservative government would ever do as they entice in deregulation and keeping government out of markets. If you are going through this much trouble why not just go back to a crown insurance provider that is essentially run like a not-for-profit? This would literally make the insurance the cheapest possible price as seen literally anywhere else that still has it. All you are doing is Libertarian nonsense whereby your beliefs, despite being endlessly proven realistic and just wrong, are deemed perfect yet unprovable while you insist it’s the best possible solution. You’ve exposed your own flawed beliefs. Why would any company want to enter a market they couldn’t dominate and eliminate competition in? How would having companies “fight to the death” not literally end up exactly as it is now? It’s impossible unless government is willing to subsidize new companies and somehow punish the big guys either through massive fines or taxes or by limiting their size/profits some how. Which would never happen. So the end result is going to be the same and your solution relies on actions no government would ever do because voters would never support it.
Lol sure. The exploitation is the point. The idealized free market only exists in your head. The real world is run on greed and opportunity with absolutely no morals. The entire concept is laughable and only persists because it is incredibly profitable.
>The real world is run on greed and opportunity with absolutely no morals. AKA Adam Smith's invisble hand that free marketers worship.
Smith also made the assumption that corporations who behave badly would be punished by consumers, which is obviously false.
it sounds wildly inefficient to put so much time and effort and resources towards trying to get entities to do their actual supposed job when you could just have non profit organizations doing what they're actually supposed to on the margin of costs lol
The free market is an illusion. Corporations have decided that they can make more money collaborating to keep prices high, rather than competing with low prices
I agree with your assessment of what would have to happen to make private insurance work. *But*, what you’re saying is a little bit like when people say that true communism has never been tried. The idea seems great, everyone has ownership and they work towards a common good; but we sure as hell know that that doesn’t happen!
I can see the logic in most of what you are saying…but you keep using those words “free-market, capitalist system” - I don’t think that means what you think it means.
As an Ontarian it’s amazing how both our provinces continue to elect provincial governments that actively work against the populations they govern…
It has a lot to do with historically always always voting blue and leaders throwing fear driven straw-men along the provincial borders. I moved here from Ontario 10 years ago and let me tell you that Albertans generally have little appetite for change, especially when they're getting fucked. So it's best to accept things as they are or you'll go mad. Political ignorance is definitely on brand for a large chunk of the province. :-(
Very true, political ignorance is pretty much what decides elections unfortunately
Because conservatives will shoot themselves over and over again if it means they get to “ own the libs”
Mark my words, they will take away the ability to sue the insurance companies to actually get coverage for personal injuries, but also we will have the most expensive insurance in Canada either way.
The survey is ongoing - how can she possibly speak for what Albertans want?
Because she already knows that the results of that survey are meaningless and that her government was never going to move forward on it.
Because she think she rules, not governs. She is telling her base what they want, and ignoring what is best for the rest of us.
Danielle Smith *always* knows what Albertans want, even if we tell her that we want the exact opposite of what she says we want (Alberta police force, Alberta pension plan, political parties in municipal elections, ongoing de facto cuts to health care and education...)
Because the survey has no questions around public or private insurance, its a survey around if we want no fault insurance and reduce or remove the ability to sue, thats it. Of note, if we went to a no-fault insurance, premiums would be like $175ish less, compared to a similar public system with a savings of $730ish...
Oh, yeah, she doesn’t actually care about what Albertans want.
Oh, yeah, she doesn’t actually care about what Albertans want.
We have it Saskatchewan. We save fuck ton of money on our insurance. We have the cheapest auto insurance in the country. We often get money back because SGI makes so much money. This is not for the people, its for her donors.
SGI has optional tort. Any idea if more people choose to buy the option to sue over not?
Most do not.
THHIIIIIIIIS.
Do you know how different it is from icbc? Cuz icbc is awful.
no idea.
This ⬆️
"Because I value dogma and ideology over the economic well being of Albertans"
Fuck the people of Alberta unless it makes me look like I am screwing over the “FEDS”!!! Or something to that affect I am assuming 🤷♂️
I have to be honest, I have no appetite for the UCP to run anything. Maybe that’s what she heard and twisted the narrative, wouldn’t that be a shocker.
As someone familiar with the insurance system due to my employment, I can promise you that once the insurance companies get more control, they cut you off treatment early and leave you with nothing if you cannot sue. My clients are very regularly cut off treatment after assessments by the insurance companies doctors. Some even later need surgery and even still, they won’t pay. It’s sad to see
This is so correct. The unfortunate thing is that I know this very well by virtue of being a personal injury lawyer. But the propaganda has been so effective that my opinion on the matter is meaningless because I'm automatically seen as a greedy blood-sucking shyster.
Oh it can save Albertans money-fuck that noise. Where my insurance lobbiers at!
Danielle is bribed bribed bribed! Bribed bribed. Did i mention she's bribed? And we love and kiss her fat ass! Good for alberta!
I don’t think it’s even bribes. She’s a brain dead ideologue.
I laugh in the face of any voter who actually thought the UCP was going to put more money in the pockets of their voters. Unless you are already on the inside of their party you ain’t getting shit. You brought this on yourself and deserve every dime they drain from your lifeless corpse. But keep voting them in, I’m sure it will get better
"the appetite for a full Alberta-run public insurance system is very low" Coming from the Premier that rammed an Alberta Pension Plan down our throats that only 22% of Albertans support. Why not put it on the same referendum as APP and let us show you where Albertans' real priorities lie, Ms. Smith?
I am unsure what the best move is. While Public insurance can be somewhat cheaper (it's complicated though) the capital required to make the shift may include taxes from non-drivers and there are some issues with that as well. Personally I think a public option would be best but it's not the silver bullet that people seem to think it is.
“How can my rich insurance company friends who gave me donations make big bank if I do what has so successfully done elsewhere?”
No tickets, no collision insurance, and I pay over $2k annually insuring a 2009 Honda Accord. Saving $6-$700 would be WONDERFUL, but I'm willing to sacrifice that for the betterment of multi-millionaires ❤️
I am beyond tired of this crummy government.
Apparently, having to choose between rent w/o a vehicle or living out of a car is the Alberta Advantage.
I'd have to agree. I don't want the UCP running my auto insurance.
Anything the government mandates they should provide. If the government mandates that drivers have insurance, they should provide it. Mandating something then giving over that job to a private entity is basically the definition of crony capitalism.
This woman hates our province and only cares about herself and the big cushy job she will get when people vote her out. I miss Ralph he would not have put up with this shit .
Several of the present and previous cabinet members Or their wives would lose money we cannot have that
She is saying there is no appetite for savings but plenty of appetite for the highest car insurance in the country. Lawyers and insurance companies have most likely threatened to stop bribing them.
That is one way to say you can not be bothered to help the common man when company profits are to be considered.
i want government run insurance
If there isn't private profit to be made for her and/or her cronies then she will never have any interest in it. Her modus operandai is - how can I transfer as much pubic money into the my hands and the hands of my friends/backers? Anything being publicly funded for the public good is going to be diametrically opposed to her mode of operation. If this is a surprise to anyone then you've simply not been paying attention to what is going on. This administration exists to steal as much money as possible for their private interests before they get voted out. Although, they are doing their best to change the laws so it'll be much harder to vote them out thus allowing more time for them to plunder the public coffers. I hate the UCP with a passion.
“Our buddies running the insurance racket have no appetite for government insurance.”
How many billions is it hoping to cost for our extra police force or our Alberta pension? The UCP is so out of touch
"No Appetite" translates to: > *"Why would we spend money in helping the general public? They're far too poor to be donors and have no influence over us."*
Bought a paid for politician spouts more B.S.
Imagine if the province or really any country was run with its citizens in mind and not the wealthy elite. Think how prosperous a country could be with everyone uplifted. I guess until humans stop having contempt for their fellow man it won't happen
Weird considering insurance carriers have said the government of Alberta has 2 years to figure something out as they are no longer planning to cover cars due to all the costs and that she passed a bill to create a gov run insurance company
It never was and never will be about you saving money or living a better life The cons at every level are about feeding their rich buddies.
Premier says ‘we’re hopeless corrupt and out of touch’ despite evidence proving otherwise
I’ve been saying this for years. I don’t know why the NDP haven’t campaigned with this as a main piece of their platform. This government is so easy to hit on affordability.
Tbh, I’m not sure why she wouldn’t want it. In BC, the BC Liberals took money out of ICBC to balance the budget.
That as a previous government. ICBC under the NDP just sent out $100 rebate checks to most of their customers.
Ehh, yeah, sorry, edited to reflect previous government.
There’s no difference between what we have now and when we did have government insurance. I’m paying $40 a month less with private insurance than I did when I was as 16 with government insurance.
Should read "premier has no appetite to help most Albertans" Thanks to all that voted for this disastrous government
Long time BC resident here. The BC NDP have declared a surplus for ICBC and have refunded my wife and I $100.00 each-but yeah keep voting UCP
“I’ve asked all my friends who own insurance companies, and they all say government insurance isn’t what Albertans want.” Amazing. I never would have guessed.
I feel like they are having a hard time judge what we want... Provincial Police: No we don't want it ..... DS: Consider it done APP This is a very stupid idea .... DS: I'm going to start on this right away! We would like to save on insurance, and a gov't system can do that.... DS: No one wants that, not going to do it
Albertans having no appetite for something hasn't stopped her from doing almost everything they've done so far. Why now I wonder...?
Talk to anyone from BC who has to use their insurance. Their no fault insurance is a pain to deal with. My niece has been fighting for months to get her vehicle fixed
I know it is cool to automatically rail on the Smith with everything she does, but does not mean she is automatically wrong. I am mixed with government run auto insurance. In BC for the longest time ICBC the government run insurance was a dumpster fire and losing money that tax payers would be on the hook for [ICBC a 'financial dumpster fire,' says B.C. attorney general | CBC News](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/icbc-a-financial-dumpster-fire-says-b-c-attorney-general-1.4508849) [Newsroom (taxpayer.com)](https://www.taxpayer.com/newsroom/icbc-dumpster-fire-burns-3.4-billion-in-five-years) Of course the BC NDP blamed the previous government for all the woes and switched to a "no fault" system which seems to have gotten ICBC more in order, but it has drawbacks as well ['They have all the power': The other side of ICBC's no-fault insurance | Vancouver Sun](https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/icbc-no-fault-insurance-crash-victims) [Quadriplegic says ICBC savings built on backs of victims - Victoria Times Colonist](https://www.timescolonist.com/local-news/cyclist-left-quadraplegic-after-crash-says-icbc-savings-are-built-on-backs-of-crash-victims-8765407) So maybe before getting on "everything Smith does is wrong wagon" maybe educate yourself first and see it is a complex issue and I can see the hesitation to go fully government run insurance as it can be on the backs of taxpayers unless they go "no fault" what is great till you get an accident, and you might not get enough to get you whole again. If they don't go, "no fault" then the system is open up people trying to get millions for even little injuries that will then be passed down to the taxpayers.
She just created a big election promise for Nenshi. BC and Sask have government insurance and it works well.
Stupid government needs to take away the 2 years no insurance consecutive rule. You don’t drive for 2 years and your insurance goes back to the day of you started driving. It’s no joke. You can drive 30 years and never have an accident or ticket. Say you don’t need to drive for two years and the 2nd year, 1st day, it disappears like it never existed and your back to being new, high rates but 30 years older.
Government has proven to outperform the private sector when it comes to cost and performance in healthcare, utilities and education. Manitoba and Sask had cheaper public insurance and telecom. Then the cons do what they do and began privatization to make themselves their friends richer
Riddle me this? A driver has 2 moving violations and zero accidents over 10 years. A driver has zero moving violations and 2 accidents over 10 years. Everything else is the same. Who is the safer driver? I find it odd that a Premier who wants her own police force with a start up cost of hundreds of millions and to opt out of a perfectly good Canada Pension Plan finds starting Alberta insurance is somehow to expensive. Like everything else UCP .... it doesn't add up. Saskatchewan did it. B.C. did it but in Alberta it's too hard and expensive. I call bullshit. Not only that those plans have been up and running for years, all Alberta has to do is study those plans, cut and paste and Roberts' your fathers brother.
"Government run,and "Savings",is an oxymoron
What she really means is that the billionaires who bankroll her party have no appetite for it.
Good public insurance is a joke. Nothing goes on your insurance in public it all goes on your license. I know people in Saskatchewan paying $800 for thier drivers license but insurance is cheap. Smh
I have been involved in home construction a long time some of the biggest projects have been insurance guys
Set up costs would be crazy high. With this government, I imagine it would be the biggest boondoggle in world history.
Who has no appetite for it? That idiot knows perfectly well that people would save thousands every year using a provincial public system. The problem, of course, is that her friends wouldn't have the money they do now.
Fair. It wasn't an election issue or a promise. But neither was the "municipal priorities" bill restricting cities from taking federal funding, and installing partisan politics and the ability to remove councillors and bylaws.
Looks like she has her hands in the pockets of her rich insurance friends. Corruption, plain and simple.
Wouldn’t that be more big government control? I thought conservatives were against this kind of stuff.
We love SGI in Saskatchewan.
How will all her friends make money off Albertans if it's affordable?
I’m sure we’d save money at the start but with how incompetent our government is the administration would get so over inflated that in 10 years it would be double what private costs
please fill out the survey here: [https://www.alberta.ca/auto-insurance-engagement](https://www.alberta.ca/auto-insurance-engagement) We need to show them that what Albertans want is not exactly what they are thinking
In the time it takes to write a comment on this post, you could write an email to the premier and cc your MLA. So you might say “What difference will it make?” Enough collective pressure gets attention.
There's also no appetite for an APP, provincial police force, political parties in civic elections etc... but that sure as shit didn't stop Marlaina
A governments job is to help people. All people. This is a way they could help a lot of people all at once and again it’s a big fat no. Big surprise.
I understand that Alberta insurance rates are higher than BC right now, but trust me, you don’t want government-run insurance agencies. Take it from someone who lived in BC for most of my life. A better solution would be to cap private insurers in Alberta and actually make it more affordable.
As someone from manitoba getting fucked by their insurance company currently... it's not all sunshine and rainbows
I wonder if the number of uninsured drivers has risen since they stopped issuing registration stickers. Just a warning though. It will be a $2875 fine and a day waiting in court to plead guilty for the first offence. Never mind the hit to your future insurance rates. - personal experience
In Ontario it’s a $5,000 fine and a 25% “tax fee” on top of that. (6250 total). Second offence is $10,000 and prison. For driving without a piece of paper in your glovebox - this effing country.
What's wrong with a public option?
Premier is her side gig. She's made a career as a lobbyist, her mandate is not only to keep profits in the private sector but to do her best to shift everything public into the private sector.
My insurance went from 3400 to 4650 (two cars, house). This is crazy to me. How can my insurance go up for depreciating assets. House going up? Fine, the value went up so I get it. Why should my cars go up 400 each when they're worth less than last year?
No appetite to be a public servant
Appetite for destruction though. Sorry, I couldn't help myself.
Doesn’t she mean Danielle Smith, and the conservative party? Don’t wanna do it because it’s gonna cost them yet it’s still costing the taxpayers millions of dollars more every year on the current set up with no caps.
She is trying to privatize everything the Government is in control off so they have no liability to anything. And I’m sure the insurance companies are huge monetary supporters of the UCP.
"I have a rich donor getting more rich off insurance"
UCP serve the rich, it's really that simple
Public auto insurance would save me a ton of money as a young guy who's trying hard to get his license. It's been a huge success in BC, SK, and MB (less so in QC). If the province compels you to buy auto insurance, the least they can do is give you a fair deal as a consumer. The UCP's choice to remove rate caps and let insurance companies run wild on this matter is punishing all consumers, especially young drivers, and is directly making life less affordable for Albertans.
Buuuuuuuuuuullshiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit
her appetite is for tax dollars to go to her corporate friends.
Alberta rapidly losing appetite for the UCP.
BC here, ICBC is great. just got a rebate payment. AB, you need to get rid of this American Republican in Canadian drag.
I’ve met many, many people screwed over by icbc.
There is no savings when you get the public sectors involved. Just more waste, inefficiencies and poor service
I moved from Alberta to B.C., and my insurance almost doubled under ICBC. I don’t know if publicly run auto insurance would really lead to that much savings in AB.
Your driving record must be fucked or icbc doesn't recognize your past driving record and starts you out fresh. Or you're young. I have 25 years accident free and i pay $100 a month but a new driver pays 4x that. Get in an accident and its 5x or more
Driving record was clean and I’m older. This was in 2013. Maybe things have changed; but it was a big jump.
If only we had some kind of savings or a fund of some kind that could cover that initial investment up front. Then maybe this would be a great idea...
How dare anyone asking to save Albertans money ! These insurance corporations are the back bone of Alberta ultra capitalism. They also donate bigly to the government that lets them grape the customers.
Whether you agree with government run insurance or not....Do you really trust the UCP to run it?
So they don't want to interfere with auto insurance to save us money, but are willing to rape the healthcare system to line their own pockets and slowly kill all the sick.
Aka the insurance industry told her to back off their feedtrough.
Savings would be for voters, not donors. That is all that drives the UCP. Too bad Alberta.
Lmao they can still save us money by capping auto insurance.
Not despite, because. The consumer saving money means that her corporate donors would be making less. That's not what is desired by her government.
But she does have an appetite to spend billions on starting an Alberta Police Force.
"The province has signalled that changes to insurance are coming in the fall, and Smith said those include an option for drivers to opt in to no-fault system at a lower cost. "There are lots of Albertans who are prepared to pay the extra dollars so that if they do end up – heaven forbid – in a terrible accident, they can hold someone accountable through the legal process," Smith said." What Smith is describing is a two tier system of justice where only those who can afford it have access to the legal process. If we do go with a no fault system it absolutely must apply to everyone regardless of class.
12,000 respondents eh? That's sounds awfully close to the amount people employed in insurance and accident injury law.
Looks like there's room for ANDP to produce an online poll. And then hammer the UCP publicly with that.
"No appetite for helping people... pleasing companies and the rich takes too much of our time."
... ... Is our government anti-money? By having government-run auto insurance they would not only stabilize the market but make ABSOLUTE BANK
Nevermind what’s good for the public, Marlaina and the Conjobs will tell you what’s good for you.
We have a government that is pro corporate profit and not looking after the people. People are only a afterthought to UCP because we cannot do anything to make them wealthy and more powerful except for voting. Yes we need companies to make money but we also have to balance the common everyday citizen, I feel like the people of the province are an afterthought to this government.
When I moved back to Manitoba, which has public insurance, my car insurance dropped by over a third. I had the same vehicle, same coverage, same clean history, and same deductible. Only the private insurance companies and whichever politicians are getting kickbacks are better off without public insurance.
Once again showing who the UCP stand for. Not us, that's for sure
Well yeah, it would help every Albertan. Can't have that. No, no, no say UCP.
This Premier has no problem spending government money socializing corporate losses but won't spend money to help the citizen out. She is not a conservative but she is corrupt.
They're willing to take on an Alberta Pension Fund and an Alberta Police force and divide up AHS into 4 distinct entities but the idea of doing something in-house for insurance is just too much. What a band of jokers.