can some canadian please explain to me why TELUS are operating health care clinics?

Ariadne Conill 🐰:therian:

@megmac sure, but TELUS of all companies? do people legitimately go: “yes, i want my healthcare from my ISP which is constantly down”?

gaytabase

@ariadne @megmac do they apply the TELUS branding to it?

Meg

@ariadne oh no, specifically Telus has managed to contract with governments to do some health care delivery in areas where people don't have much choice.

Mostly Telehealth as far as I've seen, where they're basically undercutting local family doctors and nurses so the government run insurance is pushing people to them.

Ariadne Conill 🐰:therian:

@dysfun @megmac yes, they do

gaytabase

@ariadne @megmac this does not seem like a good way to attract customers

Ariadne Conill 🐰:therian:

@megmac is this a recent development? i don’t remember this from when i lived in toronto ~10 years ago

Ariadne Conill 🐰:therian:

@dysfun @megmac it could be worse. it could be Koodo.

gaytabase

@ariadne @megmac comcast health?

Meg

@ariadne pretty recent yeah. Also keep in mind health care is a provincial responsibility, so this will vary some by province. Telus is based in Western Canada (originally Alberta, now BC) so if you're seeing this in BC for example that might be part of why. Dunno if Ontario is contracting with Telus or not but I'd say they showed up in force maybe 6 years ago in Alberta.

Andrew Paulin

@dysfun @ariadne @megmac I'm not even in a comcast area but please don’t give them ideas

trendless

@ariadne more of a how than a why, but they partnered with the now-defunct Babylon in 2018 and really leaned into it during the early years of the pandemic when rovincial govts were only too happy to be able to throw money at Telus for the optics of being able to provide telehealth services.

Ariadne Conill 🐰:therian:

@trendless has some real “$10,000 halliburton military thinkpad” energy to it