Seniors' care

While seniors now comprise 10.5% of Alberta’s population, that will grow to 15% in the next ten years and to 22% in the next twenty years. That change in Alberta’s demographic makeup will place an additional strain on Alberta’s healthcare system as seniors succumb to the inevitable ravages of aging.

Research by the Parkland Institute shows that, ignoring inflation and population growth, this change in demographics will add about 30% to Alberta’s health care costs in twenty years' time. While that may sound like a lot, it amounts to an increase of only 1.32% annually over the next 20 years. Such an increase is clearly manageable in Alberta where:

• Gross domestic product (GDP) has grown an average of 4.2% annually over the past decade — three times the rate required for increased health care spending, and
• Total public and private health care spending amounts to only about 5.2% of GDP — less than one third of total health care spending in the United States and about half of health care spending in the rest of Canada.

Without that additional invesment, however, we will find ourselves totally unprepared for the aging of the baby boomer generation.

The current situation

Rather than make the required investment, the government has already started cutting support to seniors care. They have abandoned their promise to build 600 more long-term care beds, even though the number of seniors who are medically assessed as requiring this high level of support has been reported at over 1500 people. They are also taking extraordinary measures to off-load the cost of prescription drugs for all but the lowest income seniors onto the recipients of such services and their families.

For seniors still able to live in their own homes the future is menacing because of:

• The complete inadequacy of the publicly funded home care services they require
• The unaffordable cost of privately delivered home care and other support services
• The mounting costs of utilities and maintenance services
• The loss of community services such as the possible closure of rural hospitals
• The increased costs if health care services are de-listed
• The increased cost of prescription drugs and health insurance to all but the lowest income seniors under the new pharmaceutical strategy

For those in declining health and no longer able to manage life in their own homes, the prospects are even bleaker:

• Those assessed as requiring nursing home care face long waiting lists, possible extended hospital stays, and placement, ultimately, perhaps far from their home communities and support networks
• Those who do make it into a long-term care facility will no longer be protected by the regulated accommodation rates that the government intends to abandon under its Continuing Care Strategy
• Many who can’t find a nursing home will be forced into privately operated assisted or supportive living facilities where the care they require is not available, and they will be charged not only for room and board but also for the personal care they require in order to live
• Many rural communities do not have the care facilities with trained staff to allow seniors with more complex medical needs to stay in their communities close to family and friends

Lack of adequate care facilities will hurt families, the community and the economy

Worst hurt are frail seniors (those who need help toileting, dressing, moving and feeding) who are in a facility where the care they require — just as much as a heart attack victim may need bypass surgery — has to be purchased, service by service or in time blocks.  This burden frequently falls on their adult children, whose ability to find or retain gainful employment is thereby jeopardized.

Many seniors whose incomes are slightly above the income thresholds for Alberta Seniors Benefits (ASB) and free prescription drugs find themselves and their families much worse off than those who do qualify.

Investing in public healthcare and public continuing care for seniors will:

• Lift a burden on the adult children of frail seniors and allow them to participate in and help build the provincial economy
• Provide the homecare necessary for seniors to stay in their own homes as long as possible and relieve the burden on Alberta’s healthcare system
• Allow seniors to remain in their own communities where their support systems are accessible
• Ensure the wellbeing of Alberta seniors and allow them to age with dignity