"Future Long Term Care Costs"

LTC Global Canada

Future Long Term Care Costs

"How Much Will Long Term Care Cost In The Future – The Impact of Our Aging Population On An Already Ailing Health Care System."

Purchasing long term care insurance is about planning for the future. In order to do so, we need to take a hard look at our current situation and try to anticipate what long term care costs will be in 10, 20 or 30 years from now.

Nobody knows for certain what the future will hold. However, here are some the present day facts: We all know that our current publicly funded health care system is struggling. This is reflected in longer waiting times to see a specialist and to schedule various surgical operations; increasing difficulty in finding a family doctor particularly in rural regions of the country; and shortages of hospital beds. In January, 2008, the Frontier Centre for Public Policy (FCPP) and Europe's Health Powerhouse (HCP) released a report which compared Canada's healthcare system with those of 29 European countries. The results were starting. Canada ranked twenty-third out of thirty countries.

"And yet the real challenges have only begun."

On a per capita basis, annual health care spending on individuals aged 65 to 74 is more than double than what is spent on Canadians 64 and younger. For individuals 85 and older, spending increases by a factor of 10! ("Spending on health care to reach $5,170 per Canadian in 2008", Canadian Institute for Health Information, November, 2008)

According to Statistics Canada, today 12% of our population is over age 65. In approximately 20 years, 25% of the Canadian population will be over age 65.

The financial impact on our health care system of more and more Canadians headed into their "health years" will be absolutely staggering.

At the same time that health care costs are rising, the tax base will be getting smaller as more Canadians retire and the labour force shrinks.

With a smaller labour force, there will be fewer people available to meet the growing demand for long term care services.

Based on these facts, it is widely anticipated that:

Long term care costs will escalate dramatically in the near future.
It will be increasingly difficult for the Canadian government to continue to subsidize long term care costs.
Private health care will inevitably play an increasingly bigger role in Canadian society as the country’s health care costs grow beyond the government’s ability to keep pace.

"Our gigantic and rapidly aging baby-boomer generation virtually guarantees that the challenge of long term care will become greater and far more expensive with time."