Alberta’s government brought a new health regulation into force on July 22, defining a category of medical tests called “preventative health testing services” that fall outside the province’s public insurance plan.
The regulation stems from Bill 29, the Health Statutes Amendment Act, 2026, which Primary and Preventative Health Services Minister Adriana LaGrange tabled in April. The bill received royal assent on May 14, with the government saying the testing provisions would take effect later, once officials drafted regulations, targeting summer 2026.
The amended Alberta Health Care Insurance Act defines the new category around three conditions: a licensed practitioner has to provide the test, patients have to obtain it through self-referral rather than a doctor’s requisition, and the health minister has to specifically designate it by order.
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Albertans can already get mammograms, cervical screening and other standard tests through the public system, in many cases without a doctor’s referral, at no out-of-pocket cost. This regulation doesn’t touch those existing pathways. What it does is create a separate option for those who want faster access, or who’d rather skip a doctor’s visit, and can now pay a private clinic directly for whatever tests the province designates.
The government’s stated goal is earlier detection and less strain on the public system. However, the full scope of what Albertans can self-refer for and pay privately remains undefined. Ministers say details will come through further regulation this fall.
In December 2025, Alberta passed Bill 11, which let physicians bill the public system while also charging patients privately for the same medically necessary services, a first for any Canadian province. The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives called that law the beginning of American-style health care in Canada, and Canadian Doctors for Medicare and more than 20 other health organizations have pushed Ottawa to review whether it breaches the Canada Health Act.
“Silence in the face of this legislation is complicity,” said Dr. Danyaal Raza, a family doctor and the group’s board director.
Andrew Longhurst of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives argues the new testing regulation extends that same risk. Because physicians and technologists can now split their time between the public and private systems under Bill 11, he says steering paying patients into private clinics could draw staff away from public wait lists instead of adding capacity elsewhere. Canadian Doctors for Medicare points to comparable experiments in Australia and the United Kingdom, where parallel private-pay systems didn’t shorten public wait times and in some cases made them longer.
Friends of Medicare, an Alberta health advocacy group, argues the province never ran on this kind of restructuring. “This government has no mandate to dismantle our public health care system,” executive director Chris Gallaway said when Bill 11 was introduced.
LaGrange has said the province intends to be the “payer of last resort” if a self-paid test turns up something serious, meaning patients would have to bill their private insurer first, a detail CBC reported skeptics doubt insurers will actually honor.
