Senior citizens from Alberta given option to buy extra care

Calgary, December 16: The Alberta government has announced a long-term health care strategy on Monday, stating that their senior citizens who are able to afford extra services can do so in their chosen facility.

Several senior citizens as wells as Medicare advocates reacted negatively to this plan arguing, this is a costly method and only gears towards privatization. However, Health Minister Ron Liepert explained that this strategy is an essential one because one-fifth of the people in the province will age 65 years and above after 20 years.

The province of Alberta has always limited the amount that health care providers could charge for their services, thus keeping privatization almost impossible due to financial constraints. However, Liepert stated that they are now looking into providing a way for private development. He said, “Quite frankly, it's a business. And the numbers haven't justified the business case. What we want to do is start to open some of that up”.

This new strategy would allow the senior citizens in the province to receive the flat-rate government funds, which is given according to their needs. They could then use these funds in order to look for their own health care providers. Senior citizens who have their own money to add to the funds they get could then avail for more services.

Public Interest Alberta, a group representing 15 senior organizations is not happy with this new strategy. A representative from the group stated that this strategy will only threaten their public health care system and would only place senior citizens from a lower income bracket at risk.

Bill Moore-Kilgannon said, “It's just horrendous that they're not committing to increase the capacity of our public health-care system, and boldly, flat-out say they're going to open up the pricing of seniors' care so that more private corporations can come in and build more long-term care facilities”.

Many private companies have been pushing for these changes as they promote privatization.

“What this will do is further open up seniors and their families to huge increases in the price of long-term care without any government oversight, at the end of the day,” Moore-Kilgannon said.