Columbia Valley seniors complain to premier about residential care rate increases
December 6, 2009 by Lynn Knell
Filed under Columbia Valley, Community, Government, Headlines, Health, Homes, Invermere, Local news, Medicine
In a press release dated October 8, 2009, BC Health Minister Kevin Falcon laid out new room rates for residents in long-term care facilities across the province, increases of up to 29%, equating in fees as high as just under $3000 per resident, starting in January, 2010.
In a response the following day, MLA Norm Macdonald laid out the dire situation in which the residents in all long-term care facilities in British Columbia are about be put. “For the Minister, these are just numbers, they don’t mean anything,” said Mr. Macdonald. “But for seniors, these increases will have a devastating impact.” He went on to say, “Seniors in care are among the most vulnerable in our society, and they often have no choice in where they live. This government is taking advantage of that vulnerability with a rate increase that is simply outrageous.”
Under the new fee schedule, the province is set to take 80% of the combined income of the residents and their spouses, so long as this leaves the resident $275 per month for personal expenses. Please read the article, which contains the Department of Health’s press release of October 8, 2009 as well as Mr. Macdonald’s response:
http://columbiavalleynews.com/2009/10/09/fair-and-equitable-rate-jump-for-residential-care/
We feel that the public needs to be kept abreast of the situation because it has become critical, to say the least. An unbearable financial burden has been put on a great many families, so much so that some have had to remove their loved one from the professional care he or she needs. Other families are considering doing so in the near future.
The tragedy, for it has become one, is that many of the spouses of these residents are now faced with the terrible fact that they cannot any longer afford to live in the family home. Desperate to find a way out of the situation, one spouse learned that there is something called an Involuntary Separation which can, if one chooses this option, separate the incomes of the two so the government can only seize the income of the resident spouse.
Imagine the heartache this would cause for a couple who have been married for 60 or 70 years! Some of them are 90 and even 100 years old. They have come from a time when marriage was marriage and separation was unthinkable. How will they be able to understand this new concept of still being married but separated in the eyes of the government?
Helga Boker, wife of a resident of Columbia House in Invermere, has written a letter to Premier Gordon Campbell, asking him to reconsider the fee increases. She says, “This is something everyone should be aware of as this will be you in a few years, fighting to keep a few dollars that you saved over the years or earned in a pension, and the government wants 80%!”
She is right. We may not be directly affected at this moment but every one of us will, at some future point, be placed in a position where we will experience this same situation if we don’t send a message to our government now, while we can.
I admire Helga and all the families of residents in Long Term Care in British Columbia that are finally speaking out on this issue. It is simply deplorable that our Government is allowed to get away with this. And I think that if more people realized what was going on in these facilities and spoke out against it, then the Government would have to back down. This Government is charging, in some cases, $3000 a month for a bed in a residential facility. And the ‘care’ that goes with that bed includes a diet of Kraft dinner or beans and weinners two or three times a week. Is that what you would serve to your child at home???? Well, that’s what our SENIORS are being fed!!! There was a time when our seniors were considered as ‘elders’ and held in high regard. What happened to that?? Why don’t they count anymore?? We NEED TO MAKE THIS GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABLE FOR HOW THEY TREAT OUR SENIORS!!!!!!!!!!
This is the first I have heard about these hikes, kind of Mr.Campbell to leave people with $275 per month for personal expenses.
This is $3000 per person in care. $6000 per couple.
Excuse me, but it seems that the people of this Valley have their priorities focused in a different direction. We have an article about Jumbo…about taxes….about the Bank of Canada….and then we have an article about our Seniors, who are the REAL people of this Valley…….and who gets the most attention??? Not the PEOPLE of this Valley. Not the souls who made this Valley what it is. The focus is on what makes money. Do we not owe something to the people who pioneered this Valley?’ To the ‘old folks’ who are dying off in our local facility. They should be the ones that count. And I am ashamed that they are given so little recognition and so little thanks for what they have given us. Most of these Pioneers will be gone soon….and I think we owe them a debt of gratitude and a promise of ‘good care’ in their final days. They have given us so very much…and we are letting them down when they need us most. Shame on us….shame on this government for not caring…..
Does anyone care that the seniors in care in this community are eating food that you wouldn’t want to feed your family? Would we willingly eat junk food several times a week? If you like the taste of artificial mac and cheese, that’s one thing but would you want to eat it three times a week? How about chemical-laced luncheon meats nearly every day? Boxed, pretend mashed potatoes, anyone?
We all cringe when we think about airplane meals, prepared miles away and trucked to the plane just in time to be nuked by the attendants so you would get a ‘delicious’ hot meal high in the sky. Well, this is how our seniors are fed every day of the remainder of their lives.
How would you like to sit on the toilet for a half an hour because the only person on staff that shift who could help you get off was busy with other, more important duties? how would you like to fall out of bed and not be able to rouse staff to help you get up because there was only one staff person and he or she was at the other end of the wing attending to someone else whose emergency was worse than yours?
Get my message?
Chris is right. These people deserve so much better. It is not their fault they are old and frail and sick. And it is also not the fault of the care-givers who look after our pioneers. They are good and caring people, highly trained to do their jobs. Their hands are tied by government’s cut-backs.
In our local long-term care facility, we have a fully operational laundry room which is not used because there is nobody to staff it. Why? Because the current government decided it would save money if all the laundry was trucked hundreds of miles to a central location. No mention of the environmental cost of such a scheme.
Then there is a fully operational kitchen which doesn’t prepare meals because there is no staff. The government thinks it is saving money by having the airplane meals made in a central location, miles away and trucked to the facility each day. No mention of the environmental costs here either.
How would you like to be one of those seniors whose clothes are laundered in industrial-grade detergents because the government saves money buying their supplies from a central location hundreds of miles away and what they supply is what you get. If you read the article above, you would understand that the residents are left only a very small amount of money with which to purchase their extras each month and the attitude is that if they don’t like the detergent used, they will have to buy their own. Even when some or most of them have skin rashes, lesions and more, likely because of the decision made by the government, it’s just too bad, dearie.
How will it all end? Well, if projections mean anything, not well. It means nothing to the suits in Victoria. We are statistics. We comprise the demographic. Nothing more. There is no heart here and we cannot expect to see any interest in our affairs unless we make enough noise that the BC government is embarrassed before the whole country. They are proud of the fact that they are ‘taking the lead” in the economy and the environment, examples for the other provinces to follow. Heaven help the other provinces if they convince any of them to follow our lead! Heaven help us all.
So what can we do, folks? And do we have the initiative to do anything at all? As Helga Boker said, “This will be you and I and all of us one of these days”. Do we want to find this same situation in place when and if we some day find ourselves in such a circumstance?
I would recommend that, if you are really interested in making a difference, you contact MLA Norm Macdonald and let him know you want to get behind his effort to embarrass this government publicly.
Something is very much out of whack when a government is so bent on taxing the citizenry for everything in the name of the environment but makes decisions that contradict their very mandate.
Lynn and Chris, I totally agree, but would add one thing. Hospitals and nursing homes have not always been run by government. It is not that many decades ago when they were created and run by the communities they served. They were funded locally – with lots of community involvement – and their boards were local people. How did we let that slip out of our hands?
Most of the problems you mention above are a consequence of having turned over an important local service to the control of outsiders who couldn’t give a hoot what happens in the valley – and probably don’t even know what happens.
If the concern is so great, why are people not out organizing meetings to come up with a strategy for getting health-care facilities back, out of the hands of big gov and into the hands of those to whom it matters — the locals who use them.
If people care so much, why are people not trying to get these facilities back under local control? Does the fact that this is not happening mean people don’t actually care all that much?
If my recollection is correct, it was only about 6 or 7 years ago that our local hospital and long term care facility was taken over by the gov’t, i.e. Interior Health. Up until then it had been run by a local board. The kitchen turned out the best meals around, and if a resident lost something in the laundry, such as their teeth, you knew it was no further than the basement and would turn up again in a couple days. Now, if someone looses something in the laundry, it’s off to Nelson, never to be seen again. If staff or patients had a complaint, it was dealt with at the local board level, among neighbors and associates of the Valley. I don’t know much about the decision to turn everything over to “Health Authorities”. But by all accounts, it was a huge mistake….unless you were on the money making end of the deal. And for those people/organizations, I’m sure it was a windfall. Unfortunately, our seniors are paying the price. If there was a way of getting it back into local hands, I for one, would be out there fighting for that.
I wonder if there is any way the community could take back the control they either lost or gave away. It might be worth taking a look at, although it would be a huge undertaking, even if it were possible. It would take not only political will but the will of every single person in the area serviced by Columbia House. And I am not certain that enough people really care enough to put their intentions to the test.
Humanity seems to be mired in a state of inertia where it is just too much bother to actually do something about the issues that really matter. It’s not that we don’t care because we do, but we appear to be overwhelmed by life itself and just coping takes so much of our mental and emotional energy these days that we haven’t enough left over with which to tackle ‘someone else’s’ problems.
Perhaps we could do some investigating into the history of the take-over by Interior Health to get a better idea of if and how it might be possible to change the system and get back control of Columbia House. Is there anyone out there who would be willing to put in some time and energy towards this possibility?
Am I the only one who has a problem with this? CBC did a segment tonight about a couple in N.B. who have been married for 45 years and they are having to go thru the ‘Separation’ route in order for them to be able to afford the care that the spouse in Long Term Care is needing. Is this what we have come to?? I think it is deplorable that this is what our gov’t is asking of our Seniors. Somehow I think we need to rise up and say that this is unacceptable. We cannot treat our elders this way. I am ashamed of the government that allows this….