The Challenge of Paying for Nursing Home Care, Op-Ed Piece

HEALTH--The Challenge of Paying for Nursing Home Care, Op-Ed Piece

The following is an op-ed piece by Jamie Muir, Minister of Health.

In every province across Canada, nursing home care is expensive. Nursing homes provide 24-hour care from highly trained people in a safe environment with all necessary medications, equipment and supplies.

Every province asks nursing home residents to contribute to the cost of their care. We in the Maritime provinces must ask for more of a contribution than other provinces do. In Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick, the provinces' financial positions currently do not allow for an increased provincial share of nursing home costs while at the same time protecting other health priorities. We wish it did.

We ask seniors to pay what they can. We are not ashamed to do so. The people who can pay for their own care do. The people who cannot, receive help. Indeed, more than 80 per cent of people living in nursing homes are subsidized by the provincial government.

So the province, through the Nova Scotian taxpayer, is also paying what it can. The province is glad to do so.

The quality of nursing home care in this province is high, and every senior who needs that care receives it, no matter what their income. Every spouse of a nursing home resident keeps the resources he or she needs to live on with comfort; contrary to what's been promoted recently, we are not out to create hardship for anyone. Every case is looked at individually and the spouse is left with money to cover living expenses as well as expenses such as cable television and renovations. We do not take the spouse's car. We do not take the home where he or she lives.

Also contrary to recent publicity, the government does not seize people's money. After a review of a person's finances, a dollar amount is identified that he or she is able to put toward their care. People then pay the nursing home directly and we pick up their costs once they have spent their own funds on their nursing home care.

We appreciate that seniors have worked hard. They have raised families and paid taxes that have contributed to their families through good education, health care and community well-being.

Seniors have also saved money for a rainy day. For some seniors in declining health, nursing home care is the rainy day. This is the time when they need to make an investment in themselves.

Most of the families of these seniors are relieved to know nursing home care is there for them. Most understand their loved ones use what they need to receive the care they deserve. The families, in turn, are working hard to make their own way. That's what their parents have worked hard to teach them.

Many seniors are also relieved they are not a financial burden on either their families or on health care. The health-care system must find resources to care not only for seniors, but for sick children, for chronically ill adults or for people who need expensive drugs monthly to lead a normal life. The system has other pressures, such as the need to hire more doctors, nurses and other health professionals to reduce wait times.

There are many other large demands on a small system designed under the Canada Health Act to provide only for the acutely ill in hospitals.

In a province the size of Nova Scotia, spreading our revenues equitably and fairly means that the spread can be thin. The challenge is to use our resources to meet the health-care needs of all without compromising the quality of care for any.

This is a challenge my department faces every day. It's a challenge any provincial government in Nova Scotia will face, one that will only grow as our population ages.

The reality is that much of health care in Nova Scotia is a shared responsibility. It is only when the federal government begins to contribute its share that the responsibility can be lessened for all.

And that is why I have asked the Romanow Commission to recommend that nursing home care, and other care delivered outside a hospital, be established as care that needs to be included in the Canada Health Act. This is the kind of care that provinces also need help funding from the federal government.

I am highly respectful of the characteristics that define the generation preceding me: an attitude of resilience, a spirit of independence and a sense of responsibility. Our seniors embody these qualities. That is not surprising given that they have, in their time, witnessed the best and the worst of human endeavours.

Like our government, I respect our seniors. This is the generation who raised me, who influenced me and who helped shaped my own values and beliefs. I will continue to support them in all the ways open to me.