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The private clinics in question provide hip, knee and other orthopedic surgeries that require overnight stays at the expense of the provincial government.

Smith also promised to continue expanding private surgical clinics so Albertans, she says, can have shorter waiting lists and faster treatment all while costing the government less.

But is that in fact what is happening? Or is the government simply intent on privatizing public health care no matter the consequences?

These questions arise as Smith finds herself caught in a health care scandal that simply won鈥檛 go away.

On Friday, documents obtained by The Globe and Mail聽showed that were partially owned by the same company that two years ago signed a deal with the government worth $70 million for imported pain killers 鈥� Turkish Tylenol 鈥� that proved mostly useless.聽

Owned by Edmonton businessman Sam Mraiche, MHCare Medical committed to at a time when there was a shortage across Canada. The company was paid up front by the government, which received only 30 per cent of the order and is still trying to recoup its losses

MHCare Medical is now the partial owner of Alberta Surgical Group. It was also revealed that proposals to Alberta Health Services for a contract extension, as well as two new clinics, would cost twice as much as what it costs to perform the same surgeries in an聽Alberta Health Services hospital and well above what other competitors were paid.

All of this ties into allegations made by former Alberta Health Services CEO 鈥� Athana Mentzelopoulos 鈥� in her statement of claim that the premier鈥檚 office and other government officials pressured her to accept high bids from Alberta Surgical Group. Two days before Mentzelopoulos was to meet with the auditor general to present her allegations, she and her entire AHS board were fired. A deputy minister of health has since replaced her as the only administrator. It is the fourth time that the UCP government has fired a CEO and the board.

If AHS is indeed resisting the government鈥檚 move to use more private surgery clinics maybe they have good reason. It鈥檚 well known that Alberta, like other provinces, has a shortage of health care workers. Part of the reason is that some doctors and nurses have moved over to the private clinics for higher wages and a more predictable lifestyle, leaving the public system short-handed.

Or maybe it鈥檚 because while private surgery clinics expand, operating rooms in the public system sit vacant. Or maybe it鈥檚 because some private surgery clinics are getting more money for the same services that AHS provides.

Smith has promised to redesign the public health care system. Instead of a province-wide, integrated organization that it once was, she has divided it into four separate entities. Hospitals and acute care are now one, much reduced, organization.

If you want to reorganize your public health care system by cutting it down as you promised your base 鈥� most of whom want to punish it for its pro-vaccine stand 鈥� then is it any wonder doctors and nurses look for somewhere else to work? Is it any wonder that the system is fighting back?

Smith is finding out that it鈥檚 not so easy to dismantle a public health care system. And it鈥檚 not cheap either. Albertans, like most Canadians, want it to be preserved so medical care is there for them when they need it.

Attacking it for so-called resistance because you find yourself in the middle of a possible scandal is nothing more than a distraction. Albertans shouldn鈥檛 be taken in by it.