It's time for Gen-50plus to press for reforms to Canada's Health Care System

Recent studies of Canada's ailing health care system are showing that too many hospital beds are being taken by older adults waiting to get into a long-term care home, or who are staying in hospitals because there are insufficient community support services to care for them if they return home. These older adults are known ingraciously as "bed blockers". They are taking beds that are needed by acute care and post-operative patients whose own access to timely health care is being postponed due to a lack of a bed. It's a vicious cycle that is not benefitting anyone, and turning our precious health care services into a nasty mess.

Pouring more money into the system really isn't the answer. In Ontario, we already spend about 48% of the government's budget on health care. A recent article in the Ottawa Citizen notes that many seniors waiting for a spot in a nursing home are languishing in expensive and scare hospital beds, and that that number is getting worse, in spite of all the extra funding that is being put into community health services designed to keep the seniors in their homes.  In Eastern Ontario, 16% of hospital beds are occupied by seniors who should be elsewhere, up from 14% in 2008.

It's time for Gen-50plus to start speaking up in favour of reforms to the health care system that will truly make health care more easily accessible to themselves, and to everyone else. Dealing with the question of how to manage the health care services of this growing demographic must be a priority. And it should not include throwing more money into the black hole that has become Ontario's health care system. The province needs to address the shortage of long-term care beds as well as making it a priority to improve community-based health care services that enable the aging population to remain in their homes for as long as possible. It's got to be far cheaper to provide services to people in their homes, than in a hospital - which is the most expensive alternative.

A recent column by Barbara Kay in the National Post talks about today's Zoomers (Boomers with Zip) and notes that "health care is uppermost in our minds. Wellness spas are hot. And Google "discount heart surgery" : you'll get two million hits. Look for Boomer selfishness to end medicare as we know it: if we can't get the care we want here, we'll buy it in India."  If we can buy it in India, why don't we start demanding the right to buy it in Ontario? Why don't we have the right to choose our own health care services and providers?  It's time for Gen-50plus to stand up and start demanding the kind of health care we want and deserve, and for the right to pay for it ourselves if we want to. 

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