Aging Population

• Our in-house expert, Dr. Kimberlyn McGrail: Higher utilization, not aging, is driving up healthcare spending. Check out the video on the EvidenceNetwork.ca – You Tube channel!
• From healthydebate.ca: Will the Aging Population Bankrupt our Health Care System? Many believe that aging of the population is the main cause of increased health care costs. If this is true, this paints an exceptionally worrying picture about the sustainability of health care in the future. However, somewhat surprisingly, the majority of researchers don’t believe that aging plays a major role in increasing health care costs. What’s the story? This story features videos from Stephen Duckett, former CEO of Alberta Health Services, and Samir Sinha, Director of Geriatrics at Mt Sinai and University Health Network Hospitals. View the story here.
• A plethora of research indicates population aging does not threaten the financial sustainability of Canada’s healthcare systems, and in fact is only expected to increase healthcare spending by about 1% annually from 2010-2036. Every year the increased number of elderly will be small in comparison to Canada’s overall population, and consequently their impact on the delivery of healthcare in Canada will also be small.
• Seniors healthcare is more costly than healthcare for younger people, for a variety of reasons. The evidence still supports only a 1% annual increase in healthcare costs due to population aging.
• Aging of the population typically accounts for only a small fraction of inflation-adjusted health cost increases. Health cost increases are driven by changes in the quantity and types of healthcare received by Canadians of all ages, not by demographic changes.  That is, an aging population provides opportunities for all sorts of interventions without good evidence of increased health or quality of life, but this is an issue for all Canadians, not just the elderly.
• The accuracy of the projected financial impact of population aging on healthcare expenditures depends on several factors, including the economy, and the accuracy with which fertility, immigration, and mortality rates and their impact have been estimated.
• An aging population does not necessarily threaten the sustainability of Canada’s healthcare system, but it does create a need to ensure we are able to provide seniors with the right care, in the right place, at the right time.
• In this just released paper, researchers show there are significant opportunities for cost savings in how care is delivered to the elderly. Rather than current systems where home care and nursing homes may be in separate organizations, the authors call for an integrated system to provide lower cost, seamless care for seniors across a wide range of services such as meals on wheels, home care, supportive housing, long term care and specialized geriatric assessment and treatment units in hospitals.  Such a system makes it possible to substitute lower cost home care for higher cost nursing home care while maintaining choice for clients and family members, and comparable, or better, quality of care
• A leading economist suggests governments can move now to protect new generations from debt, program spending cuts and tax hikes by convincing current generations to proactively share the tab.
• The Institute for Research in Public Policy (IRPP) has produced three reports reviewing how the aging of Canada’s population will present a host of complex and evolving social and economic policy challenges for governments at all levels over the next few decades. The research focuses on a wide range of fundamental issues, including labour market changes, the adequacy and security of retirement income, funding and delivery of healthcare and care-giving services, regional effects, federal-provincial dynamics, and end-of-life questions. They have commissioned several reports:  Go to Reports
• Recommended Reading On Aging Population.

Our Commentaries

• 
  Defined pensions largely a thing of the past
  By Robert Brown
  The world of retirement income security is rapidly changing – and leaving most Canadians without a security net. In 1986, a sizeable 39% of the labour force had an employer-sponsored pension and most of these (92%) were Defined Benefit Plans where workers knew clearly the income they would have post-retirement.
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  Baby boomers looking to right public health care, not drain it
  By Cy Frank
  Should we baby boomers be feeling guilty now that everyone else seems to have finally clued into the developed world’s worst-kept secret: there are lots of us, we didn’t have enough children of our own to replenish the taxpayer base, and we didn’t contribute enough in taxes to cover our future health needs as increasingly frail citizens.
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  How much is enough retirement income?
  By Michael Wolfson
  How much income would most of us consider enough during our retirement? Canadian finance ministers will implicitly give us their answer when they define a “modest Canada Pension Plan (CPP) expansion” at their next meeting in June 2013.
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  Why we need an improved and sustainable CPP
  By Michael Wolfson
  Canada’s finance ministers have just concluded another meeting postponing — yet again — improvements to the Canada (and Quebec) Pension Plan.

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