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The Cost of Getting Older in Canada

Monday, September 28th, 2009

Right now, 4 million Canadians are over the age of 65. By 2026, that number will double to 8 million Canadians. The aging population will doubtless take a costly economic toll on individuals, families, and the nation as a whole. Exactly what costs are associated with getting older in Canada, and what should aging baby boomers do to slow that cost?

Plan Ahead

The retirement years are another phase of life, just like entering university or taking that first step into one’s career. And just like entering the job market for the first time required preparation and planning well in advance, our senior years also require good advanced planning. Planning out the costs of your retirement should start five or even ten years in advance.

As a rule of thumb, expect to need about 70% of your pre-retirement income in your retirement years. In New Brunswick, one senior offers the advice to try to live on that 70% of your income now, before you are retired, just to get a feeling for what it will be like to live without that extra 30%.

Going into retirement debt-free is also a very good idea. This may require some creative living in the years before retirement, as those in their forties and fifties may need to downsize in order to achieve the goal of being debt-free by 65.

Canada Pension and Old Age Security

At the age of 65, Canadians can receive a maximum of $844.58 per month from the Canada Pension (CPP). You can access your CPP before the age of 65, but you should be aware that it is taxable.

Old Age Security (OAS) also activates at 65. The standard Old Age pension is $484.63, but low-income pensioners can also apply to receive additional help.

Economic Help for Seniors in British Columbia

Each province also has its own programs to help seniors afford to enjoy a high standard of living even as their yearly income decreases. In British Columbia, these include:

- Shelter Aid for Elderly Renters (SAFER) helps low to moderate income seniors continue to afford their rent.
Sales Tax Credit, which seniors can apply for to save money each year on their taxes.
The CareCard for Seniors entitles seniors to save on prescriptions and other medical expenses.
Anyone who receives Income Assistance in BC, including seniors who receive the Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS), are eligible to receive a bus pass that costs only $45 for the entire year.

Thanks to programs like this in British Columbia and throughout Canada, seniors can retire with a measure of confidence that they will be able to afford those “golden years”.

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Commentary on Government Funding for Long Term Care

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009


Seniors are living longer than ever before in Canada, and as the baby boomers start to hit age 65 in the next few years, the “baby boom” generation will become the “elder boom” generation. Right now, seniors represent about 12.5% of the Canadian population; by 2021, they will represent closer to 20%, or one out of every five Canadians.

Already, health expenditures for seniors are disproportionately large to the senior population. Although seniors are only 12.5% of the population, they account for 42.8% of the total health care expenditures. Alzheimer’s alone costs Canada nearly $4 billion per year, and by 2031 the number of Canadians with dementia is expected to double. Furthermore, while the cost of caring for elders is relatively reasonable for those elders younger than 85, once seniors pass the 85 year mark, the cost of care more than doubles. This is a point of concern, as more and more seniors are living longer. In fact, by the year 2056, the number of seniors above the age of 80 is expected to triple – from one in thirty seniors to one in ten.

If you are a government minister, looking at these cost figures will make you swallow hard.

The Canadian government has not paid particularly much for long term care for its most elderly citizens. Access to government-funded nursing homes is challenging; wait lists can be up to two years long, but the care itself does not have a particularly good reputation. Meanwhile, most private long term care facilities are unaffordable for most families, costing anywhere from $40,000 to $70,000 per year. Public and non-profit nursing homes are certainly more affordable, but recent government spending cuts have made even these long term care facilities unaffordable or close to unaffordable.

It is fair to say that the Canadian health care system is in a state of crisis. It is easy to see that the aging population will put even greater stress on the health care system, and funding long term care for seniors in Canada will grow harder by the year.

What does the future hold for government funding for long term care in Canada? Will the government have no choice but to create a more privatized system of health care delivery – which has proven to be both costly and inefficient in the United States? Or will the government and its people find a creative solution for the ever-increasing cost of caring for seniors? Time will tell. In the meantime, caregivers of seniors in Canada (and soon-to-be-seniors) should live by one golden rule: use preventive methods to keep your elders in as good shape as possible, because by the time they develop chronic diseases, funding for them might no longer be available.

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Caregiver Trends in Canada

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009

As we know, the Canadian population is aging quite rapidly. By 2020, one out of every five people in most provinces will be above the age of 65. Compare that figure to today’s, in which close to one out of ten people are seniors. Furthermore, not only will their be more senior citizens in Canada, they will be older than ever before. Because life expectancy is increasing, the proportion of older seniors (80 years and older) will more than triple by 2056 from one in thirty to one in ten.

Who will take care of all these aging baby boomers? In some cases, seniors will move to long term care facilities. In other cases, they will stay in their homes for quite some time, getting help from a home health provider or similar service. But for most Canadians, the tradition of children looking after their aging parents remains the most likely option for these seniors.

Who are Canada’s Caregivers?

Over 2.5 million Canadians who are 45 years or older are the primary caregiver for an elder or senior. About 75% of all caregivers are between the ages of 45 and 64. The remaining 25% of caregivers are seniors themselves – 16% are younger seniors between 65 and 74, while 8% of caregivers are 75 and older. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the majority of these caregivers are women – about 60%. While most Canadians are caring for close family members (see below), a third of caregivers are caring for a friend, an extended family member, or a neighbor.

Who is Cared for in Canada?

Most Canadian caregivers are caring for an aging family member; 70% of all caregivers care for family. Of these family members, 60% of them are elderly parents or parent-in-laws. A minority of caregivers (less than 10%) provide care for their spouse, but some researchers suspect this number may actually be higher, because caregivers tend to under report caring for spouses. In particular, aging wives tend to care for aging husbands but do not report it as caregiving.

Because men tend to die at a younger age than women, the majority of elders receiving long term care from a caregiver are women. In particular, the most common situation for a caregiver in Canada is to care for an elderly mother or mother-in-law.

As Canadians age, long term caregiving will be more and more common. As caregivers pay their own toll of exhaustion and emotional hardship in caring for their elderly loved ones, Canadians should start planning now for how they plan to provide care for their aging relatives and friends.

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Alzheimer’s Care

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009

Robbing elders of their personality, their memory, and their independence, Alzheimer’s disease is one of the cruelest diseases of old age. As if the cruelty of the disease itself weren’t enough, caring for a senior citizen suffering from Alzheimer’s is difficult and expensive. In 1994, the net cost of caring for Alzheimer’s patients in Canada was nearly $4 billion. Today, the Alzheimer Society of Canada estimates that this figure has risen to $5.5 billion. As the population ages, this number will only increase.

What about the individual cost of care of seniors with Alzheimer’s in Canada? A study in 2006 in the International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry found that the average cost to caregivers of elders with Alzheimer’s was almost $1,300 per month. And as Alzheimer’s patients gradually suffered more from the disease, this cost went up by $30 per month for every one point increase in the patient’s MMSE score.

Slowing the Progression of the Disease is Also Cost-Effective

Because the cost of caring for an elder with Alzheimer’s disease increases as his or her mental state deteriorates, slowing the progress of the disease is not just good health policy but also good economic policy.

The drug Rivastigmine (also known as Exelon) is one fairly common pharmaceutical treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. A 1997 study that appeared in the journal Clinical Therapeutics found that Rivastigmine saved $0.45 per day after six months, and as much as $6.44 per day after two years.

Future Factors in the Costs of Alzheimer’s Disease

In 2007, 88 year-old Sydney Salter, who suffered from dementia, wandered away from his retirement home and died in a parking lot from hypothermia. When Alberta judge Ronald Jacobson studied the case, one suggestion he offered was to study the possibility of putting GPS tracking ankle bracelets onto elders suffering from Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia.

Some think the judge’s suggestion is a sound one. Others balk, including Mary Anne Jablonski, who is Alberta’s minister of seniors and community. In an interview with the CBC News, she compared the idea to George Orwell’s book 1984, in which Big Brother was always watching. The Alzheimer Society of Canada fears that ankle bracelets will only further escalate the costs associated with Alzheimer’s.

Studies suggest that a careful look at the cost-effectiveness of different Alzheimer’s treatments have not yet been explored. As the Canadian baby boom generation enters their twilight years, such an exploration is certainly necessary.

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