Aged-care crisis is looming
By Jim Toohey
October 05, 2008
AUSTRALIA'S baby boomers, with their general fondness for the finer things in life, would have shuddered at a recent Productivity Commission report into the future of aged care.
Aged-care providers in this country are already well aware that baby boomers will demand a far higher standard of accommodation and amenities than their parents and grandparents accepted.
They will be the taxpayers who will carry the "significant and growing burden" that will accompany a four-fold increase in care recipients if existing funding mechanisms are retained.
Older Australians will increasingly find themselves in hospital beds when aged care is not available. This in turn will lead to longer surgery waiting lists and increased delays in emergency departments.
Residents of low-care facilities (hostels) can currently pay a refundable deposit when they enter aged care, to help fund high-quality accommodation. But a curious and contradictory federal law denies the same right to high-care (nursing home) residents. The result is an increasing gap in the quality of accommodation, quality of life and dignity for older Australians.
The Rudd Government did not create the looming crisis – it is an issue that consecutive governments have ignored for two decades.
The Government must lead a very frank discussion of what we will need in the future and how we are going to pay for it.
And it must do it soon. We're simply not getting any younger.
(Jim Toohey is the CEO of TriCare and a member of the Aged Care Alliance.)
Abridged
SOURCE: Courier Mail
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1 comment:
Given the current global economic crisis I don’t believe that the government will end up funding the baby boomers accommodation choices in the future there is potentially a crisis of accommodation going to occur for seniors in our community as the population numbers boom in this are.
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