Stop blaming seniors for soaring health costs
Posted on November 10, 2010 in Health Debates
Source: Globe & Mail — Authors: Andre Picard
TheGlobeandMail.com – Life/Health – André Picard’s Second Opinion
Published Wednesday, Nov. 10, 2010. André Picard, Columnist
It is stated repeatedly – to the point that it has been accepted as fact – that the aging population is driving health care costs through the roof.
Aging baby boomers, we are told grimly, will bankrupt medicare.
Is it true?
What is true is that the proportion of Canadians who are seniors is increasing. Today, 14 per cent of the population is over 65. That will rise to 23 per cent over the next 15 years, according to Statistics Canada.
It is true too that per capita health spending increases steadily with age, from a low of $1,223 at age 5 to $3,772 at age 65. After that, per capita health spending doubles every decade, hitting $8,425 at age 75 then $16,821 at age 85.
Looking at those numbers we assume, intuitively, that we are doomed. But let’s not forget that there are all kinds of cost drivers in our health system and an aging population is only one of them.
This point is made eloquently in a recent report from the Urban Futures Institute entitled “Sustainable: British Columbia’s Health Care System and Our Aging Population.” While the report focuses on British Columbia, the messages are universal.
The authors, Andrew Ramlo and Ryan Berlin, examined provincial health spending over the past 30 years, from 1979 to 2009. (They focused on state spending because the data are good; physicians, hospitals and prescription drugs are all covered for seniors.)
During that 30-year period, public spending on health care rose to $118.6-billion from $13.6-billion across Canada. (In that same period, public spending in British Columbia jumped to $15.6-billion from $1.6-billion.)
Four factors accounted for those increases:
* Population growth – 7 per cent;
* Aging of the population – 14 per cent;
* Inflation – 19 per cent;
* Increased utilization – 59 per cent.
The report also analyzed those factors in the decade 1999 to 2009, when spending increases were attributable to:
* Population growth – 13 per cent;
* Aging of the population – 24 per cent;
* Inflation – 22 per cent;
* Increased utilization – 41 per cent.
The Urban Futures analysis tells us that the aging population is having an impact but, by far, what is driving health spending is utilization. There are new drugs, new technologies, new hospitals, more doctors and nurses (with higher incomes), new administrative structures and so on. Governments have been willing – save for a brief period in the early nineties – to increase health spending well above the rate of inflation with nary a concern.
Between 1979 and 2009, health spending increased at an average rate of 8 per cent a year.
That is a much faster growth rate than inflation (3.4 per cent), the over-65 population (2.9 per cent) and population growth (1.7 per cent). Health spending has also, for three decades, grown faster than overall government spending (5.2 per cent) and gross domestic product (5.3 per cent).
Now, some readers will say: Sure there is increased demand and costs, but seniors are the big users of care so it’s their fault.
The Canadian Health Services Research Foundation, in its popular Mythbusters series, tackled the issue of aging seniors. It noted that over a generation, seniors have doubled their use of hospital and physician services and their drug use has skyrocketed. The increases are much higher than younger age groups.
Why? Is the older-equals-sicker equation correct? Are 21st-century seniors really that much sicker than 20th-century seniors? Or are we medicalizing aging to a perverse degree?
According to a fascinating article in the Canadian Journal on Aging, the cost of treating the sickest seniors – those in hospital – has remained relatively stable over a long period. On the other hand, the use of health services by healthy seniors (those who live independently in the community) has ballooned.
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Tags: budget, Health, standard of living
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