Have you saved enough for your health? $2,700 per year | General financial discussion | Discussion forum

And that doesn't include the huge cost of live-in caregivers or paid-by-the-hour.
Increasingly, the nursing homes seem to be occupied by people who can't afford to pay someone to help them at home. I visit one regularly, and nobody in their right mind would want to live there. The only good thing, I suppose, is that most of them aren't in their right minds. However, many of them are scary places. I see things going on in the one I visit that I know are against the law but I am too worn out from other struggles with the health care system to take them on.

Our society has been eating away at the Canada Health Act for some time, and this is the result.

Retirement homes are a completely different entity from nursing homes.

However, since the nursing homes, which are government-regulated, are often so bad, the retirement homes, which are strictly pay-as-you go, are now extending their services.

This is the way it now works in Ontario. All nursing homes cost the same except for the distinction between private, semi-private and ward rates. The very poor will have their costs entirely subsidized by government at the ward rate if they don't have enough income. Some nursing homes, even at the ward rate, are decent and in fact provide semi-private or even own room with shared bathroom, but most do not. The nursing homes that are good typically have enormous wait lists of several years. So, if you can't afford private care and you require more care than the government will provide in your own home, then you are desperate for a nursing home bed. In that case, you are pretty much forced to accept a poor quality home, which you will not likely ever get out of even if you have your name on wait lists for other places as there will always be someone more desperate than you since you are already accommodated, however inadequately.

If you have money, then you can live in a retirement home. There are some very inexpensive ones, but they are typically hell-holes, the kind that get profiled on newsmagazine stories. The liveable ones range from about $2500 to $5000/month although there may be some exceptions that are even more expensive.

Now comes the tricky part. If you are living in a retirement home, you are there at the mercy of management. When they deem that you require more care, they can kick you out. However, increasingly, they are seeing your decline as a profit-making opportunity. Thus, they will offer you the possibility of remaining in the retirement home (which is almost always nicer than any nursing home, all things being equal) as long as you are willing and able to pay for additional services which they will provide for you for a price. This can, and often does, literally add untold thousands to your bill. It is still not a nursing home; it is a retirement home. You are obligated to only hire the people they make available to you. Because it is a retirement home, the safeguards which are laid out for nursing homes in considerable detail in the legislation are not available to you. Great deal, eh?
And, yes, it will likely get worse.

Been there. And not done yet.

Yes, your friend was definitely in a retirement home. Nursing home accommodation doesn't come with separate bedrooms.

Yes, money buys you choices. Quality health care should not be dependent on money, which is the case now. That is the whole point of the Canada Health Act. "Retirement homes" that are in effect functioning as nursing homes, such as you have described with the secure unit, ought to fall under the jurisdiction of the Long Term Care Homes Act, which governs the nursing homes, for the protection of the residents. The regulations governing retirement homes are much looser.

I could write a book on what I've been through with "the system".