No, it's not just your imagination.
Whenever there is a money dispute in Saskatchewan involving health dollars, it's rural Saskatchewan that's hit the hardest.
The latest example of this happened last Tuesday when the Saskatchewan Medical Association - the body that negotiations doctors' remuneration with the provincial government - announced the first of its "study sessions" to hammer home the point that 19 months without a new contract was long enough.
By no small coincidence, the first location for this "study session" was right in Premier Brad Wall's hometown of Swift Current, resulting in the Nov. 30 closure of the seven medical centres in that city plus the closure of other medical clinics in the Cypress Health Region including in Cabri, Eastend, Gull Lake, Herbert and Ponteix.
Admittedly, this was just a one-day event, affecting patients with scheduled appointments scheduled at these clinics. (However, there was the ominous threat of more such study sessions later). Those requiring immediate care were urged to go to the emergency room of Swift Current's Cypress Regional Hospital.
But it was all too typical that it was rural people who would be first and most-inconvenience by this event. It always seems to go this way.
The above observation isn't necessarily to pass judgement on the actions of the doctors, pressing home the point that the government isn't taking into consideration their after-hours patient care and how it is impacting the retention and recruitment of physicians in this province. (That said, it's no small irony that Saskatchewan physicians argue that they the need a settlement "for the sake of patients" yet seem to have few qualms about allowing those very same sick patients to become pawns in their contract demands.)
However, the reality that such disputes effect rural Saskatchewan in a disproportional way goes right back to the original doctors' strike of 1962 over the Woodrow Lloyd CCF government's implementation of medicare. The one death attributed to the withdrawal of services happened to be a rural boy. In fact, think of any health care dispute over money in this province and what you'll see is rural Saskatchewan bearing the brunt of the consequences.
Take the deft crisis of early 1990s and the solution chosen by the new NDP government. One can argue that it was inevitably that the NDP had no choice put to look at their most costly line item - the health budget.
But the fact that it was 52 rural hospitals closed or "converted" to health centres says much about the inequity. (Yes, the Plains Hospital - the newest facility in Regina on the outskirts of the city - was also closed during the austerity measures. However, it should be noted that the Plains Hospital was opened as the city hospital for Â鶹´«Ã½AVern Saskatchewan's rural people.)
The current Saskatchewan Party government has been significantly kinder to rural Saskatchewan - largely because, its governance has so far mostly been about dishing out money.
But even during its cash crunch in the middle of 2009, one of the first things the Sask. Party government put on hold was the already-approved 13 rural hospital and nursing homes. It should also be noted that 35 of the funding for these facilities must come from local residents. This is unlike city hospitals.
Moreover, this spending freeze was neither applied to the children's hospital in Saskatoon nor even the new Catholic nursing home in Saskatoon stirring up controversy of late over the connections between the Sask. Party and those who have received untendered contracts.
Today, as doctors claim they are fighting over doctor recruitment issues (a problem that happens to be most acute in rural Saskatchewan), it's rural communities first hit by these rotating study sessions.
Somehow, it all seems rather typical.
Murray Mandryk has been covering provincial politics for over 15 years.
