Year: 2010
Location: Edmonton
Profile: John Kolkman, before his retirement, was a long-time public policy researcher in both the public and non-profit sectors. After many years as a researcher for the NDP caucus, Kolkman became the research and policy analysis coordinator for the Edmonton Social Planning Council for 14 years. Earlier, Kolkman was one of the founding group for the Boyle McCauley Health Centre, a primary healthcare centre serving several of Edmonton’s poorest neighbourhoods. Through his involvement with Boyle McCauley, he met low-income Albertans who had been removed from the medicare rolls for failing to pay their provincial medical care premiums. Others also received little medical care because they could not afford the extra-billing charges that many doctors were imposing on individuals. The Alberta government rejected calls to end the practice. Kolkman became active in Friends of Medicare, which formed in 1979, because it was lobbying governments to end both of these practices that eroded the universality that state medicare is meant to provide. FOM’s lobbying of the federal government led to federal pressures on the provincial government that ended both restrictive practices. Kolkman was also involved in FOM efforts against permitting private clinics, which FOM viewed as undermining universality.
Keywords: Boyle McCauley Health Centre; Edmonton Social Planning Council; Extra-billing; Medicare premiums; New Democratic Party; Primary health care; Private clinics; Public policy analysis; Universality.
Transcript: Download PDF
See also: Friends of Medicare