The grey wave of aging baby boomers won't hit Alberta's health care system as hard as we thought, said experts at a recent panel.
Roughly 100 people were at the University of Alberta Hospital's Bernard Snell Hall on March 23 for a free talk organized by the Alberta Council on Aging. Five panellists discussed proposed changes to the province's seniors' drug plan scheduled to kick in July 1.
Under those changes, seniors would pay for drugs based on their income — lower-income citizens would receive them for free while higher-income earners would pay a premium. This is different from the current plan, which has all seniors pay up to 30 per cent of their drug costs up to $25 per prescription. Former provincial health minister Ron Liepert said the current universal approach was unsustainable due to the oncoming wave of aging baby boomers.
The province has said health care costs are spiralling out of control, and has put the blame on seniors, said Gary Pool, president of the Alberta Council on Aging and Morinville resident.
"Seniors really are not the biggest part of the problem," he said. There will be more of them in the future, he said, "but the need for the province to reduce services in health care is not nearly as big an issue as they make it out to be."
The wave that wasn't
Donna Wilson, a registered nurse with the University of Alberta's faculty of nursing, challenged the belief that seniors were clogging up the health system. About 76 per cent of all hospital patients are under 65, she said, citing her analysis of two years of provincial data. Younger patients outnumber older ones about three to one.
"People of all ages are in the emergency department. The health care system is not just for old people."
Alberta's per-capita health spending (adjusted for inflation and population growth) is now about the same as it was 20 years ago, said Noel Somerville, chair of the seniors' task force for Public Interest Alberta. As a percentage of GDP, it's about 13 per cent, compared to a national average of 20. "Alberta's spending is essentially middle of the road compared with the other provinces."
The boomers are aging, he continued, but they won't crush the health system. The "tsunami" of seniors expected to hit in 20 years will double the number of people over 65 in Alberta, he said, citing research by the Parkland Institute, and require the province to raise health care costs by about 30 per cent. "That means you've got to increase your expenditures 1.32 per cent a year. That's manageable."
Drug costs are also the wrong place to try and save money, argued John Bachynsky, a retired U of A pharmacy professor. Every dollar saved on the drug budget costs the province $2 on the hospital budget, his research suggests. "The people don't get the new drugs, and they have to pay more taxes."
Planning ahead
Bachynsky called on the province to hold off on its new drug plan until it held comprehensive talks with Albertans. The province could better manage health care costs by addressing bed shortages and rising physician costs, he argued. "It seems to me to be sloppy planning."
Deputy premier Doug Horner, who was not at the talk, defended the proposed changes, noting that the province would still pay about 80 per cent of seniors' drug costs. "We have to start looking at how we're going to make a $15 billion, $41-million-a-day system sustainable," he said.
The province could easily afford seniors' health care if it stopped cutting taxes, Somerville said, citing the elimination of health care premiums as an example.
"We have stolen the inheritance of the future Albertans to avoid paying as we go for our social programs. I think that's wrong, and I think that's something we need to change."
