Alberta
Flames get hot in second period for 7-2 win over Sabres
By Mark Lukwiczak in Buffalo
The Calgary Flames scored four times in just over five minutes in their 7-2 win over the Buffalo Sabres on Saturday.
Dillon Dube had a goal and three assists for Calgary and Tyler Toffoli had two goals and an assist. Jakob Pelletier, Mikael Backlund, Nazem Kadri and Dennis Gilbert also scored, while Jacob Markstrom made 21 saves.
Tage Thompson and Casey Mittelstadt scored for the Sabres, and goalie Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen made 33 saves.
After falling behind 2-0, the Flames took control with a dominant second-period surge that saw them score four times between 2:17 and 7:39.
“It just felt like everything kind of kept coming in waves and we did a really good job,” Toffoli said. “We could tell that they were getting frustrated and we just capitalized on our opportunities.”
Pelletier, the 26th overall pick in the 2019 draft, began Calgary’s comeback with his first career goal. Backlund evened the score 20 seconds later from the right circle on a poor moment by Luukkonen.
Gilbert, a Buffalo native, scored his first goal of the season and the second of his career 4:04 into the second by collecting a drop pass and beating Luukkonen with a low slap shot.
“We maybe started a little bit slower than we would’ve liked, but we had a good response in between periods,” Gilbert said. “We had a good second and third.”
Luukkonen made one of his best saves of the season on a two-man rush 7:09 into the second, robbing Dube. But the Flames quickly struck again, making it 4-2 20 seconds later on Kadri’s shot through traffic for his 20th goal of the season.
Calgary outshot Buffalo 34-8 through two periods.
“We never found a rhythm even though we had some good energy in the first, and then we died,” Sabres coach Don Granato said. “We looked fatigued. We looked like we hadn’t played in a while.”
Toffoli made it 5-2 1:57 into the third on a tap-in and scored his second of the game to make it 6-2 with 6:55 remaining. Dube scored with 2:49 left in the game for the final margin.
Thompson opened the scoring on the power play 7:56 into the game on his 35th goal of the season. He has a career-high 69 points through 51 games.
ANDERSSON OUT AGAIN
Calgary defenseman Rasmus Andersson was held out after he was struck by a vehicle while riding a scooter in Detroit on Wednesday. Andersson has been considered day to day and isn’t expected to miss a significant amount of time. Andersson is one of Calgary’s top defensemen and has 34 points on the season.
UP NEXT
Flames: Travel to Ottawa to play the Senators on Monday.
Sabres: Begin a three-game trip against the Los Angeles Kings on Monday.
___
AP NHL: https://apnews.com/hub/nhl and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports
From the Fraser Institute
On Monday, the Smith government announced that beginning next year it will change the way it funds surgeries in Alberta. This is a big step towards unlocking the ability of Alberta’s health-care system to provide more, better and faster services for the same or possibly fewer dollars.
To understand the significance of this change, you must understand the consequences of the current (and outdated) approach.
Currently, the Alberta government pays a lump sum of money to hospitals each year. Consequently, hospitals perceive patients as a drain on their budgets. From the hospital’s perspective, there’s little financial incentive to serve more patients, operate more efficiently and provide superior quality services.
Consider what would happen if your local grocery store received a giant bag of money each year to feed people. The number of items would quickly decline to whatever was most convenient for the store to provide. (Have a favourite cereal? Too bad.) Store hours would become less convenient for customers, alongside a general decline in overall service. This type of grocery store, like an Alberta hospital, is actually financially better off (that is, it saves money) if you go elsewhere.
The Smith government plans to flip this entire system on its head, to the benefit of patients and taxpayers. Instead of handing out bags of money each year to providers, the new system—known as “activity-based funding”—will pay health-care providers for each patient they treat, based on the patient’s particular condition and important factors that may add complexity or cost to their care.
This turns patients from a drain on budgets into a source of additional revenue. The result, as has been demonstrated in other universal health-care systems worldwide, is more services delivered using existing health-care infrastructure, lower wait times, improved quality of care, improved access to medical technologies, and less waste.
In other words, Albertans will receive far better value from their health-care system, which is currently among the most expensive in the world. And relief can’t come soon enough—for example, last year in Alberta the median wait time for orthopedic surgeries including hip and knee replacements was 66.8 weeks.
The naysayers argue this approach will undermine the province’s universal system and hurt patients. But by allowing a spectrum of providers to compete for the delivery of quality care, Alberta will follow the lead of other more successful universal health-care systems in countries such as Australia, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland and create greater accountability for hospitals and other health-care providers. Taxpayers will get a much better picture of what they’re paying for and how much they pay.
Again, Alberta is not exploring an untested policy. Almost every other developed country with universal health care uses some form of “activity-based funding” for hospital and surgical care. And remember, we already spend more on health care than our counterparts in nearly all of these countries yet endure longer wait times and poorer access to services generally, in part because of how we pay for surgical care.
While the devil is always in the details, and while it’s still possible for the Alberta government to get this wrong, Monday’s announcement is a big step in the right direction. A funding model that puts patients first will get Albertans more of the high-quality health care they already pay for in a timelier fashion. And provide to other provinces an example of bold health-care reform.
Nadeem Esmail
Senior Fellow, Fraser Institute
From the Montreal Economic Institute
Alberta’s move to fund acute care services through activity-based funding follows best practices internationally, points out an MEI researcher following an announcement made by Premier Danielle Smith earlier today.
“For too long, the way hospitals were funded in Alberta incentivized treating fewer patients, contributing to our long wait times,” explains Krystle Wittevrongel, director of research at the MEI. “International experience has shown that, with the proper funding models in place, health systems become more efficient to the benefit of patients.”
Currently, Alberta’s hospitals are financed under a system called “global budgeting.” This involves allocating a pre-set amount of funding to pay for a specific number of services based on previous years’ budgets.
Under the government’s newly proposed funding system, hospitals receive a fixed payment for each treatment delivered.
An Economic Note published by the MEI last year showed that Quebec’s gradual adoption of activity-based funding led to higher productivity and lower costs in the province’s health system.
Notably, the province observed that the per-procedure cost of MRIs fell by four per cent as the number of procedures performed increased by 22 per cent.
In the radiology and oncology sector, it observed productivity increases of 26 per cent while procedure costs decreased by seven per cent.
“Being able to perform more surgeries, at lower costs, and within shorter timelines is exactly what Alberta’s patients need, and Premier Smith understands that,” continued Mrs. Wittevrongel. “Today’s announcement is a good first step, and we look forward to seeing a successful roll-out once appropriate funding levels per procedure are set.”
The governments expects to roll-out this new funding model for select procedures starting in 2026.
* * *
The MEI is an independent public policy think tank with offices in Montreal, Ottawa, and Calgary. Through its publications, media appearances, and advisory services to policymakers, the MEI stimulates public policy debate and reforms based on sound economics and entrepreneurship.
Poilievre To Create ‘Canada First’ National Energy Corridor
Trump Takes More Action To Get Government Out Of LNG’s Way
Mainstream Media Election Coverage: If the Election Was a NHL Game, the Ice Would be Constantly Tilted Up and to the Left
The book the carbon taxers don’t want you to read
FREE MARINE LE PEN!’: Trump defends French populist against ‘lawfare’ charges
Selective reporting on measles outbreaks is a globalist smear campaign against Trump administration.
Jury verdict against oil industry worries critics, could drive up energy costs
-
2025 Federal Election1 day agoRCMP memo warns of Chinese interference on Canadian university campuses to affect election
-
2025 Federal Election2 days agoFifty Shades of Mark Carney
-
2025 Federal Election20 hours agoResearchers Link China’s Intelligence and Elite Influence Arms to B.C. Government, Liberal Party, and Trudeau-Appointed Senator
-
2025 Federal Election2 days agoCommunist China helped boost Mark Carney’s image on social media, election watchdog reports
-
MAiD2 days agoDisability rights panel calls out Canada, US states pushing euthanasia on sick patients
-
Justice2 days agoCanadian government sued for forcing women to share spaces with ‘transgender’ male prisoners
-
Alberta2 days ago
Alberta takes big step towards shorter wait times and higher quality health care
-
Energy2 days agoTrump signs four executive orders promoting coal industry