Continuing Care Strategy Falls Short (Part 2)

The new Strategy promises to
leave seniors and their often beleaguered
families even more
responsible for finding,
coordinating, and paying for both
accommodation and care
services.
That’s already the case in assisted
living. Now even seniors needing the
most complex care will be just
another customer.
Under the Pharmaceutical Strategy,
prescription drugs will be the
responsibility of the continuing care
centre resident. Perhaps medical
supplies and equipment will be next.
One facility has already told families
that residents will have to pay for
their prescriptions and be responsible
for administering them. The price for
“medication assistance” in the
assisted living sector is now $200 a
month.
Twenty years ago, hospitals were
public providers of comprehensive
health care services. Long term care
facilities (then called nursing homes
and auxiliary hospitals) were funded
as part of the hospital system.
Now, long term care facilities are
clearly excluded from the public
health care system.
The fine art of presenting cut-backs
in the language of advertising and
public relations spin is alive and well
in Alberta; continuing care is not.
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The Stelmach government, like the
previous regimes of Premiers Klein
and Getty, has been consistent in
regard to these “reforms”. Long
term care has in many respects
served as a pilot project for
changes that will become the
norm in Alberta’s health care
system:
• rationing of publicly funded health
care;
• public funding based on income
rather than medical need;
• fragmentation of services by
unbundling, with separate charges
for each component of care and
services;
• increased market opportunities
and subsidies to for-profit care
and service providers;
• rapid inflation in the price of
health care goods and services;
• increased central control of public
funding and policy, with even less
accountability.
What can we do, if this does not
represent our vision of the world
we want our children to inherit?
∍ We need to talk with family and
neighbours.
∍ Tell your MLA – often and
regularly.
∍ Write to the Health Minister and
the Premier – and send a copy of
your letter to the leaders of the
opposition parties.
∍ Write to your local newspaper.
∍ Remember: you have a vote!