No doctor? We were warned, long ago
David Cadogan has a problem. He needs a new doctor. Soon. And he’s not hopeful.
“At 81, with an undiagnosed debilitating health issue, several specialist tests, images and medications in play, I’m about to be cut adrift by the closure of my family doctor’s practice in June,” he wrote this week on his Facebook page.
“Our medical system has been increasingly strained to breaking for years now. The pressure and frustration are driving professionals to pull back or away for their own physical and mental health and family balance.
“I’ll be going into the local, now years' long, wait to be matched with a doctor and keeping my personal medical records with me to take to clinics. I can’t even get on the list until my doctor actually leaves. It seems unlikely I’ll get one in this life time.”
Sound familiar? It should.
BABY BOOMERS
David K. Foot tried to warn us — in 1996. And in 2008. And 2012. And 2015. And all the other times.
The professor at the University of Toronto spelled out his concerns in his book "Boom, Bust & Echo: How to profit from the coming demographic shift."
Soldiers returning from the Second World War threw off their uniforms and started making babies. Lots of babies. Between 1946 and 1964 they created the baby boom generation, an unusual moment in modern human history.
And what happens when one generation outnumbers those who came before them, and those who follow?
Big headaches for governments, especially provincial governments, which are responsible for education and health care under Canada’s constitution, Foot warned.
(The provinces are also mostly responsible for housing, since they control municipal governments, which control things like zoning. So, complaining to Ottawa about those any of those three things misses much of the point. I digress.)
BOOMERS RETIRING
Governments must prepare for the tidal wave of demand for health-care from aging boomers, like me, Foot said.
In 2012, he warned, “A report last week from the Canadian Institutes for Health Information found that far fewer Canadians are dying before the age of 75 than they were 30 years ago.”
He also suggested what boomers do at 65 will change the workplace.
“At a certain age – one that the latest census figures show an increasing number of Canadians are reaching as the leading edge of the baby boom hits 65 – the insurance company is required to ask a pointed question: ‘Do you use your car for work, or are you retired?’
“These days, the answer might not be so simple.
“Perhaps you’ve moved on from your nine-to-five job, but run a consulting business out of your home. Or you drive to a location downtown twice a week to do part-time work for your previous employer, where they still value your decades of experience and expertise.”
Sound familiar?
'WALK LIKE CRAZY'
In 2015, Foot urged New Brunswick to start setting money aside for what was coming, instead of doing more studies. After all, he consulted for the province on studies in the 1980s and 1990s, he said.
“Those studies were excellent and those sorts of studies were not being done elsewhere in the country.”
In 2017, he tried again, telling governments they needed to spend money on activities that encourage baby boomers to stay active.
“You want to encourage them to get out and walk like crazy, so their hips and joints and ankles and so on remain in good shape,” he said.
"And to some degree it's Canadians who are dropping the ball because we've got into this no-tax-increases mentality and you can't fund ever greater waves of people in the older age groups without revenues.”
YEARS TOO LATE
Cadogan is not a boomer, since he was born during the Second World War. But he is caught in the boomer wave. And he’s not hopeful.
A lifetime as a successful newspaper man – he hired me when I barely knew how to type – hasn’t saved the retired publisher from what Foot warned was coming.
Like so many others, he’s left to scramble while governments talk about all the things they’re doing – now – to try to make things better.
Years too late.
“With fewer doctors in practice, even staffing clinics might get difficult. We obviously need some kind of overhaul of our system,” Cadogan said.
“In the meantime, I’ll be trying to stickhandle my way through the clinic system to get the answer I need.”