Caring For Our Seniors - Long-term Implications of Changes To Our Healthcare System

I am privileged to live in a great country - one that prides itself on its universal health care system. Recently though, changes have been proposed as "cost saving measures". Those changes would not only erode the truly universal nature of our current system, they would affect some of the most vulnerable members of our society - seniors.

So much time and effort has been put in to initiatives to ensure our seniors have a significantly enhanced quality of life. Such initiatives include "aging in place" where seniors are matched with the resources they need to allow them to remain in their home, universal supplementary health care insurance, prescription drug programs, and increased long-term care beds to help relieve the pressure on critical care beds in hospitals.

Two issues in particular are of grave concern - one involves long-term care beds for seniors, and the other is a proposed "reform" to prescription drug benefits.

When Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach took office, among his "Seniors' Initiatives", touted as his party's support of seniors in this province, was the promise of the creation of 600 new long-term care (nursing home) beds for seniors.

At the time this was hailed as a forward thinking measure that could potentially save millions in health care by freeing up acute care beds.

Alberta currently has 1500 seniors assessed as urgently requiring these beds, and about half of them are currently occupying acute care beds in Alberta hospitals.

It has recently been proposed, however, that as a cost-saving measure, construction be halted on these long-term care beds. This will leave many seniors, who are assessed as needing long-term care, with no alternative care after a hospital stay.

They will be returned home, where they cannot be adequately cared for, until their health deteriorates again, forcing another hospital stay in an acute care bed.

They will continue to be bounced back and forth from home to hospital, at an increasing cost to family and their own well-being, until they are finally forced to remain in the acute care bed..

This flies in the face of reason. It cost thousands of dollars a day to provide care for these seniors in acute care facilities, as opposed to the mere hundreds of dollars per day required to maintain those same seniors in long-term care facilities.

This is a clear case of short-sightedness. Yes, money will indeed be saved by freezing construction at its current level.

It is also a case of penny-wise, pound-foolish thinking. Though the money is saved now, it will be gobbled up by the actual costs accrued by leaving those seniors in the acute care beds.

The proposed change to current prescription drug strategy is equally short-sighted.

Though laudable on the surface, the plan to provide free prescription drugs to poor seniors will seriously impact those who will have to pay for it.

It has been proposed that seniors be subjected to a means test, and those seniors who are deemed to be able to afford it be required to lay out up to 5% of their gross income as a deductible on their prescription drug coverage.

Income disparity is already adjusted to a great extent through the taxation system with the flat-rate provincial tax set at 10 %.

That is to say, regardless of our income, we would not be taxed more than ten per cent of our taxable income.

The proposed deductible would be based on gross income, a form of double jeopardy, or double dipping by the tax man that targets middle-income seniors who are chronically ill.

Many seniors have paid into plans such as Blue Cross for many years on the assumption that the plan would be there for them in their senior years.

Now they are facing the possibility of paying for the drugs they require at a much higher cost than they had planned, or for which they have been able to prepare.