Blade: Albertans remember Smith’s talk show days

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Even Prime Minister Daniel Smith might laugh at this. Or maybe not these days.

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Comic genius Buck Henry performed a Saturday Night Live skit in 1976 as a radio “shock jock.”

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Host Frank Noland sits in front of a line of non-ringing phones. Increasingly desperate, he throws out ridiculous subject after subject.

When the phone remains silent, he reels in all the bait in one last desperate attempt.

“I don’t mind killing puppies. That’s me, Frank Noland, and I like dead puppies!”

“I am totally in favor of using federally backed municipal bonds to force Soviet communists to take buses to come home and kill puppies!

“Can you call me? The line is open.”

no one will call

Of course, during six years as a radio talk show host, Smith had no problem getting calls.

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That’s because, unlike Frank Noland, she was taken seriously by those who preferred her liberal point of view. She meant what she said, and just as important, she listened to them respectfully.

Smith deployed their ideas and discussed them with genuine care, whatever the distance of deep space from the mainstream. And she repeated her own firm views countless times on healthcare, Ottawa, and many other subjects.

Anyone who appears in public carries a load. Smith arrives with enough luggage to fill WestJet’s Dreamliner belly.

Now she wants us to put it all aside. Many of them have evolved or changed as I have grown up and learned from listening to you.

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“But I know I’m no longer a talk show host or a media commentator. That’s not my job today.” It’s about giving people something,” he added.

Smith had a chance to expressly disavow some of her more seditious schemes.

But she can’t do that without appearing cynical or dishonest for years. do not have.

So I didn’t hear her say no. We do not continue to require private medical insurance with copays and deductibles.

She didn’t, as before, say her thoughts on health savings accounts, the current official policy, are the route to more private payments for health care.

She did not change her view that masks should not only not be forced on people, but should not be recommended as a premier under any circumstances.

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And it wasn’t just radio talk. She formalized many of her own beliefs in a lengthy section of her dissertation for C University’s School of Public Policy.

It became clear shortly after former Prime Minister Jason Kenny said he was stepping down, before declaring that she would run to replace him.

A lot of what she says makes sense, especially when it comes to state finances. However, her cures for health care issues in particular are often at the root of public opinion.

I doubt the UCP can win the election with these views still in question. They are giant political piñatas for the NDP to shred for months.

Mr Smith wrote:

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In her view, the system “must shift the burden of payment from taxpayers to individuals, employers and insurers.”

“If you establish the principle of the medical expense account, you can also establish co-payments.”

When the paper was published in June 2021, she conducted a video interview with veteran Business Insider journalist Mario Toneguzzi.

She said it was a mistake to abolish health insurance premiums in 2008 (they brought about $1 billion a year into the health care budget).

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Premiums “need to be recouped in a smarter way, in the form of genuine insurance programs that pay deductibles of some sort,” Smith argued.

“You don’t have to have a major surgery in a year, and you don’t have to pay a portion of the cost. will be paid as a deductible.”

She said she could pay no deductible, $500, or $1,000, depending on her income.

does she still want it? Will she keep quiet now and after she wins the election? Is she going to push her medical bills onto private and private insurance companies?

Smith should be specific about all of this. If not, she’ll end up in Buck Henry’s treatment. Silence.

Don Braid’s column appears regularly in the Herald

twitter:@Donblade