VICTORIA B次元官网网址� The annual ritual of declaring a crisis in health care is upon us, with the B.C. Liberal government boasting that we have the best system in Canada, while the NDP and the B.C. NursesB次元官网网址� Union try to portray it as the worst.

The BCNU is the last big public sector union still to settle in the latest round of contract talks. Feeding horror stories to the media is part of its strategy, and this time it was a patient at Abbotsford Hospital assigned a bed in a small shower room for a month due to chronic overcrowding. Hospital officials said his care wasnB次元官网网址檛 compromised.

WeB次元官网网址檝e seen it in Abbotsford, Surrey and elsewhere: a new hospital or expansion is built and is immediately overcrowded. We are reminded every winter that influenza season brings a wave of people into emergency, expecting treatment for a viral infection that in most cases can only run its course.

The problem peaks around Christmas, when more patients than usual use ER as their .

Many people still donB次元官网网址檛 understand what B次元官网网址渢he fluB次元官网网址� is, beyond the notion that it sounds serious enough to tell the boss you wonB次元官网网址檛 be in to work. And as fewer doctors choose the endless demands of family practice, the expectation that all problems must be dealt with quickly and for free seems to grow as inexorably as the health care budget.

An emergency physician of my acquaintance provided a typical scenario for night shift at the ER. Where once nights were quiet, now there are patients waiting for hours, around the clock.

Several are drunk, and one has urinated on the floor. Surveys show as many as half of ER visits are alcohol-related, from overdoses to fights, falls, car crashes and chronic conditions.

Into this chaos comes a mother with her young child, who has nasal and chest congestion. The childB次元官网网址檚 cough led her to throw up, so off to ER they went, blithely assuming that this is where you bring a kid with a cold.

This weekB次元官网网址檚 B.C. budget brings us a step closer to the moment when half of all provincial revenues go to keep the health care system running.

In the legislature, NDP health critic Judy Darcy blasted Health Minister Terry Lake for the governmentB次元官网网址檚 failure to keep its 2010 promise to find everyone in B.C. a family doctor.

Lake allowed theyB次元官网网址檙e still working on that, and then plugged the latest Conference Board of Canada study showing B.C. ranks third in the world in health care outcomes, second only to Switzerland and Sweden.

Darcy, a former executive of the Hospital EmployeesB次元官网网址� Union, was quick to respond: B次元官网网址淭his is surely a first in question period, the Minister of Health going back to the record of the NDP government in the 1990s, because weB次元官网网址檝e had the best health outcomes in Canada since 1993. The fact is that we exercise more, we smoke less and we drink less, and thatB次元官网网址檚 to the credit of British Columbians.B次元官网网址�

We also have more elderly people, as Premier Christy Clark argued in 2011 when the federal government changed its financing formula.

After years of increasing transfers by six per cent per year, the late federal finance minister Jim Flaherty announced that starting in 2014, increases would be tied to economic growth, but wouldnB次元官网网址檛 fall below three per cent.

This of course was treated as a cut, rather than continued increases above inflation. But there it is, and all provinces have to deal with it.

Darcy is quite right that personal responsibility is the key, something to remember as the usual squabbling of special interests continues.

Tom Fletcher is legislature reporter and columnist for Black Press. Twitter: