No guts or no plan?

In the face of Alberta's plan for private health insurance, any federal government actually wanting to defend one-payer care should be eager to speak out. Instead, Ujjal Dosanjh's response was only marginally less forceful than crickets chirping:

"Alberta has basically said they are reviewing the situation and I don't think it's appropriate for me to make any pre-emptory comments," Ujjal Dosanjh said Monday. Dosanjh - buoyed by a new poll which shows Liberal fortunes soaring over Stephen Harper's Tories federally and even rising in traditionally anti-Liberal Alberta - did not seem to want to say anything that might rock that boat...

Dosanjh said no one expects the changes to happen overnight.

"I think the people of Canada know progress is going to be slow but there is going to be progress," he said.

There's a flip side to patience, which is that nobody can reasonably expect the health care system to fix itself - and that, along with a healthy dose of buck-passing, seems to be the extent of Dosanjh's action plan. While Dosanjh's office devotes itself to a thumb-twiddling marathon rather than so much as meeting with the provincial ministers responsible, others are examining or making changes which may not be reversible once started.

Fortunately, Parliament isn't far from starting up again, meaning that Dosanjh will at least have to answer publicly for his inaction. But he's already frittered away nearly a third of the one-year grace period offered after Chaoulli - and we're still a long ways away from even hearing a workable plan to genuinely fix health care.