The Province of Ontario announced today that “rich” seniors will have to pay toward their home care health services. Moreover, greater costs re prescription drugs will also be passed on to the rich elderly in the near future.
The Province’s definition of ‘rich’ for a senior Ontarian couple are those couples earning more than $160,000 per year.
Future modification of this definition of course will rest with the Province. Watch the number continually decline as the province descends more and more into debt.
We also have here in Ontario a health care levy that is income based.
So much for one tier health care.
With this background, let’s for a minute look at two representative families; Paul and Laura Rich and Blake and Jessie Poor. The Rich and the Poor families live on neighbouring streets and each have two children.
The Poor family lives in public housing and pays no rent. Their income is entirely from welfare and all of their dental and health costs are covered at public expense. No effort whatsoever is made to save for retirement.
The Rich family parents have modest jobs, a mortgage and pay for all they get in life. They also (foolishly) save for their retirement.
When both sets of parents reach retirement age, Mr. and Mrs. Poor will receive OAS, CPP and Gains. They will also receive all of their health care costs free of charge – paid for by the Riches of the Province.
The Rich parents, Paul and Laura, will also receive their CPP but their OAS will be subject to claw back and they will not qualify for Gains since they took the trouble to make modest arrangements for their senior years.
In addition, with these recent government announcements, the Riches can now expect to contribute more money to their health care – in the areas of both home care and prescription drugs.
There is a moral to this story and I leave it to you to ferret it out.
But the real story here is that governments seem to be bound and bent to address their budget shortfalls by continually increasing taxes, rather than cutting useless spending.
The ultimate outcome of this will be a continually disappearing middle class.
As I see it…
‘K.D. Galagher’
