Columbia Valley seniors complain to premier about residential care rate increases

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/news/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.