How do we meet the ALC needs of our rapidly growing elderly population – in other words, our parents, our loved ones, friends and neighbours?
How do we meet the expectations of the community — for timely care in the emergency department, short wait times for surgery, access to the latest medications and technology and timely access to a quality primary care system?
The Ontario government engaged TD Economics to study the issue of health care. Their report is entitled “Charting a Path to Sustainable Health Care in Ontario. Some of their findings and recommendations include:
Ontario’s health care budget is now over $40 billion per year and costs have been increasing at a faster rate than the economy.
In 2009, Ontario spent 12.7 per cent of its total wealth on health care, up from 8.8 per cent in 2000. Ontario used to spend less of its GDP on health care compared to Canada as a whole; now it spends more.
Ontario spends more of its wealth on health care than most nations except the United States, France and Switzerland.
One per cent of our population accounts for half of all hospital and home-care costs.
Presently, health care comprises 46 per cent of total provincial government program spending. At its current rate of growth, this figure would hit 80 per cent by 2030. Already, funding to other programs has been cut. The triple dynamic of aging societies, technological progress, and public demand have strained all wealthy countries. None have dealt successfully with the reality of living within finite resources.
In Ontario, the health budget has been increasing by $5 billion every two years. In a deficit world, this will be increasingly tough to pull off. The provincial government has shifted its focus towards reducing its large deficit.
We seem to be in a difficult situation. Let me pose a number of questions for the reader to answer.
If we believe that we should have all the health care that we deserve, should we be raising taxes to pay for more health care? Should we decrease funding to other government social programs? Should the government just borrow more money?
Alternately, if we accept that we cannot have all the health care that we want, what can we have? If we should not ask for additional funding, what should we reasonably expect from our health care system? What do we need for sure? What can we do without?
I am sure if we surveyed opinions in the community, you would offer a number of differing answers - because there is no single correct answer. Nevertheless, we need to make difficult choices.
We need extensive public debate on how our scarce health care dollars should be spent. We need to use this challenging period to engage Ontario’s citizens in dialogue over the restructuring of our health care system.
In the concluding column, I will offer suggestions on what the community can do to make a difference.
Dr. Peter Zalan is the president of Sudbury Regional Hospital’s medical staff. This is the fifth of six weekly columns Zalan has written about the city’s ALC crisis.
