"Aging at Home" (and how to sound like you are doing something when you really are not)

The province has announced $143.4 million more for its "Aging at Home" program. That sounds like a pretty significant increase for a program scheduled to receive only $330 million this year. An increase of over 50%.

Many in the media have picked this up and, with touching innocence, given the government a lot of positive PR. Instead of cutting health care (as the critics keep saying) they really are doing something!

However, this is just another way for the Local Health Integration Networks to fund hospitals, home care, nursing home services, community health services, etc., etc, etc., (i.e. just about any health care service you care to mention). So the increase is really more like a drop in the health care bucket.

Hospitals get about $15 billion in funding, while home care and nursing homes combined add about another $4.6 billion.

So $143.4 million amounts to an increase of well less than one percent for those services.

But, at least, all the "Aging at Home" media releases allow the government to sound like they are doing something. And that's the main thing, isn't it?

dallan@cupe.ca

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