Why are seniors health services being cut back?

Astonishment is my immediate response to recent local news about seniors’ care and services provided.

Health P.E.I. is seeking input (again!) from seniors and their families while the private sector is crying foul over “inequities between public and private services (P.E.I. Home Care Association).” Reallyw! So, what part of a recent report, “Seniors in Transition” released by the Canadian Institute for Health Information, did Health P.E.I. not understand?

How many other similar studies done over the years have been ignored? Yet, here we go again, with, yes, more studies.

Even the private for profit sector, give credit where credit is due, is speaking to the elephant in the room, the public sector, i.e. our governments, dropping the ball on home care and nursing home services. Our governments quite simply are not providing the funding required to provide adequate health-care services. Certainly not to seniors or the others, for example, not able to afford the follow-up medical and other services needed to keep us in our homes. Is this a sneaky way to be able to justify giving away more public services to the private sector?

Case in point: It has come to my attention that Health P.E.I. recently cancelled funding to Home Care Services. This was funding already promised to and budgeted for by Home Care Services. My questions to the minister and his bureaucrats are: 1. Where is that money going to?

2. Is this the money the federal government some months ago made a big hullabaloo when announcing health-care funding to the provinces?

3. Why cut necessary funds to a very essential service? 4. Are you moving towards giving away more public services to the private sector?

The important question is why is Mr. Minister and Health P.E.I., cutting back on the money needed to give an affordable public service touted as very necessary for people to get out of hospital and continue living at home?

Edith Perry

Millview, P.E.I.