Sweet Dreams

The upcoming elections seem to be the most entertaining I've seen with regard to Canadian politics in a long time! Mind you, there's the usual hair pulling and mud slinging, but god bless their hearts, Canadian politicians just don't take the same blows below the belt that American politicians do.  Personal life for the most part is still personal, which allows much more focus on the actual party platforms.  Now, I know this is somewhat of a detour from my usual entries, but this election, all three of the major parties have honed in on policies affecting seniors, some going as far as referencing dementia.  It might just be that the first baby boomer turned 65 this year or that all three of our charming, enigmatic party leaders and their major political base are also at the tail end of the baby boomer generation (gasp! Is that self-interest at work?) but either way, its an opportunity I have to take.  Outlined below is my best attempt at reporting the three parties platforms as they relate to seniors' health.  I have to preface this with a quick footnote, this month's posting had a rather quick turnaround time so it mainly uses information from the party websites as references as well as a few opinion polls and articles.  Ok, onward bound, in no particular order:

Conservative Party of Canada

The Conservative platform's attempt to distinguish itself from the other parties meant a 67-page pdf document listing all the Conservative parties "achievements".  The three features the Conservatives highlight as their plan to help low-income seniors are:

• Top up benefit to the guaranteed income supplement with $600 per year extra for single seniors and $840 per year for senior couples.  This is estimated to help 680,000 seniors. 
• The pooled retirement pension plan, a low cost pension option
• Helmets to Hardhats program to help former military personnel find work in the construction industry as part of continued support for their Canadian Veterans program

Mr. Harper's party focus is entirely on low-income seniors, which while an absolute necessity, is rather disappointing as it does not address any of the concerns raised with a large aging population.  The issue isn't so much that there is an aging population, but that the infrastructure in place right now will not support them unless some long-term plans are put in place. I don't know how useful $600 per year is, but for a low-income senior, its certainly better than nothing at all. The pooled retirement pension plan sounds promising, but again, the details on the website are rather sparse.

New Democratic Party of Canada

Jack Layton was rather passionate in one of his appearances that it was in fact his party who first unveiled a proposal that focused on seniors and the other parties jumped on the bandwagon.  Either way, the NDP party website outlines 5 key features, but the one of interest to me is 'expanding care for seniors'.   This includes:

• A federal home care transfer that guarantees a certain level of home care services
• A long-term care transfer to deal with the shortage of quality care
• Doubling funding for the Home Adaption for Seniors Independence Program (HASIP)
• Develop an inter-generational loan forgiveness program so that families can retrofit their homes, allowing senior family members to have a "self-contained secondary residence"

Surprisingly, I could not find much more detail than this on the website.  But lets see what meat we can get off these one-liner bones.  All four points are focused on home care, which is certainly a step in the right direction.  But its hard to imagine what Mr. Layton is referring to in the federal home care transfer and what exactly the 'certain level of home care services' would be.  Research has shown that remaining at home for as long as possible with good care is the best possible option for most seniors.  Home care however, is expensive, particularly when you account for a caregiver's time and income.  While retrofitting homes to accommodate senior family members I'm sure is costly, is it not a fraction of the long-term costs associated with home care? This same question applies to long-term care transfers.  How many beds and how much money? In fact, how much money is being allocated to any of these initiatives?

Liberal Party of Canada

 
Of the three major party platforms, the Liberals have taken a rather unusual stance and focused on the caregiver of the senior family member.  Their website also places an additional emphasis on dementia, pointedly mentioning an increase in funding for brain research should they win.  However, with regard to senior healthcare, the Liberals are proposing:

• A six month Family Care Employment Insurance Benefit so that Canadians can take time off work to care for gravely ill family members
• A Family Care Tax Benefit to help low and middle income family caregivers who provide care to family members at home.

Mr. Ignatieff's platform offers more information on his proposals.  The six month Family Care EI Benefit is a particularly interesting one.  While the proposal is six months, in actuality, the time can be taken off in smaller chunks over a year long period and can be shared among several family members.  In acute care scenarios, it may be just the kind of respite caregivers can use, but it may not be particularly helpful for caring for people with dementia.  I only bring this up because of the television campaign launched by the Liberals I happened to see in which Mr. Ignatieff introduced his mother's battle with Alzheimer's Disease prior to speaking about the newly proposed Family Care EI Benefit.  Aside from that smidgen of concern however, the Family Care proposal does carry some hope with it.  The price tag is $250 million per year, but we aren't quite enlightened on how this will be funded, only that EI premiums will not increase.

So in conclusion, the consensus for seniors healthcare seems to be, throw more money at it and maybe we'll be able to fix it.  No, no, lets not objectively look at the cost of our fee-for-service plan, how much we're already spending on sick seniors and the evidence based research on its efficiency.  That might require an overhaul of our system and is a can of worms no one wants to open.  Last time I checked, new initiatives such as better home-care, supplementing low income seniors, and additional family care EI benefits, costs money.  I'm not judging the proposals presented by the three parties, but unless the government plans on minting more money or raising taxes, something’s gotta give.  Why are politicians so reticent in realistically saying “to fund program X, we need to raises taxes by Y and cut program Z”?  Perhaps because we, like our 8-year-old daughters waking up extra early to watch the fairytale wedding of a prince to a commoner, like to hear the fairytale story of living in a land far far away where  there’s more money budgeted toward seniors healthcare while everything else including taxes remains exactly the way it is.  Sweet dreams and see you at the polls May 2nd!