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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Avalanche or glacier?
— health care and the demographic rhetoric | | Author(s) | Morris L Barer, Robert G Evans, Clyde Hertzman |
| Journal title | Canadian Journal on Aging, vol 14, no 2, Summer 1995 |
| Pages | pp 193-224 |
| Keywords | Health services ; Usage [services] ; Costs [care] ; Demography ; Canada. |
| Annotation | The recent escalation in health care costs is commonly attributed to the ageing of the population. Such a claim is largely unsubstantiated, but persists for various reasons. First, demographic trends over a long period can be quite substantial, but these effects move more like glaciers, not avalanches. Second, the effects of ageing on some types of services which cater differentially to older people will be much more dramatic; observers of those sub-sectors (such as long-term care) tend to extrapolate that sector-specific experience to health care generally. Third, at the "coalface", health care providers see their practices become more dominated by older people. They mistake this increased "presence" of over 65s in their surgeries as evidence of the effects of demographic changes. The authors discuss each of these sources of error, focusing on the confusion between changes in patterns of care for particular age groups and changes in overall levels of care. The appropriate care of older people should be a central issue for health care policy and management, as in the short term, demographic issues are largely a red herring. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-970821254 A |
| Classmark | L: QLD: QDC: S8: 7S |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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