Continuing Care Strategy Falls Short (Part 2)

We deregulate the nursing home fees
so developers will be encouraged to
provide new spaces at whatever price
they want to charge. We shift
hundreds of high and complex care
needs seniors from nursing-home
care to Designated Assisted Living,
where they have to pay for many
nursing home services, and then, just
to keep things "equitable," we make
seniors in nursing homes and
auxiliary hospitals pay for their
prescriptions, so they don't have an
advantage over the folks in assisted
living. We initiate an "enhanced
service option" choice, which means
that you can buy a second bath every
week, hire a private care aide to care
for someone in a nursing home, or
pay for therapy to help a recovery
from a stroke.
For many seniors, choice is limited.
A senior ravaged by Parkinson's, or
crippled by arthritis, or lost in the
mists of dementia, or with other
progressive and unstable chronic
illnesses, can't really take advantage
of the choices promoted by the
government.
The 27 per cent of seniors who live
alone and struggle on an income less
than $21,000 don't have the same
choices as the 50 per cent of
Alberta's senior families whose
income is more than $46,000 -- and
none of these folks have the same
"choice" or access to "enhanced
services" as the seniors among the
eight per cent of individual Albertans
with a total income over $100,000.
5
The "continued government support
for those in need" gives new meaning
to "welfare state." In this land of
incredible riches and promise, where
the gap between the rich and the
poor is ever-increasing, are we
content to hear the most ill and
vulnerable seniors continue to ask
"Please, sir, may I have some more?"
Or to leave families desperately
trying to compensate for the gaps
and shortcomings of underfunded
health care?
Despite Premier Ed Stelmach's
promise not to abandon programs for
families and seniors, this continuing
care strategy does just that. Liepert
did speak the truth when he said,
"There is no strategy that will have
greater impact on system access than
what we are announcing today."
Carol Wodak is a longtime elder care
activist and researcher, and lead
author of the Seniors Action Liaison
Team eldercare reports.
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