2024-08-26 04:00:00
I had an interesting conversation with a doctor last week about the Quebec health system.
It’s not just us, the rest of the West is “fidgeting,” as we Quebecers say.
He told me we can’t truly improve our health care system unless we honestly discuss the elephant in the room.
An untenable system
Our health system was all set up in the 1960s.
At the time, Quebecers’ life expectancy was about 67 years.
According to the Quebec Institute of Statistics, between 1975 and 1977, life expectancy was 69 years for men and 76 years for women.
In 2024, men will turn 80 and women will turn 84.
People are living longer and longer.
This means they are sick for longer and longer periods of time.
Because just because you’re living longer doesn’t mean you’re aging healthily. You have all kinds of diseases, problems.
But instead of dying at age 67 because of health problems, you lived to be 84 because of health problems!
Not only are more and more older adults requiring health care for longer periods of time, but the cost of such care is also exploding.
Given the aging population, more seniors end up in the hospital than younger workers pay taxes to fund these services!
Result: System crashes at fret.
Because it’s not designed to deal with this reality.
Thanks to technology that didn’t exist in the 1960s, we are now able to cure diseases that were untreatable 60 years ago.
But these technologies are expensive.
It’s getting more expensive.
Do you see the problem?
More seniors, more sick seniors, more seniors needing health care for longer, exploding health care costs due to new technologies, and an inverted age pyramid that stretches the spending column and the income column Shorten the columns.
We call it: a downward spiral.
I’m sorry, but such a system is untenable in the long term.
No wonder he has cracks everywhere.
And pensions!
The same goes for public finances.
Get a pension.
In the 1960s, retirees died between 66 and 67 years old.
They died today at the age of 84.
Do the math.
Pay them for another seventeen years to do nothing.
What percentage of Quebec’s provincial budget goes towards paying for civil service retirement costs? I’d love to know the answer.
Life expectancy is increasing. Experts say we could soon live to be 100 years old.
Can you imagine the pressure on public finances and health systems?
But what politician dares to talk about this?
There isn’t any…
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#Health #big #nonos #Journal #Québec
