Long-term thinking

Yesterday, there was plenty of bad news about the increased cost of health care. But one of the obvious solutions is to ensure that the health care system isn't forced to take care of issues that can be dealt with elsewhere...which makes this a stroke of genius:

The NDP's plan to spend $1.5 billion a year on long-term care and home care would begin to address the needs of seniors and help hospitals reduce waiting times, party leader Jack Layton said on Thursday...

The money for home care, Layton said, would be "an important practical first step to getting seniors out of hospital when they don't need to be there."...

The money his party would earmark for long-term care could create 40,000 spaces in long-term care facilities, Layton said. But provinces would be allowed to use it in other ways to meet local long-term care needs, he said.

While child care may have received more attention thus far in the campaign (and in the previous Parliament), the issue of care for seniors is at least equally urgent...both for the health-care providers whose resources are taken up when seniors lack anywhere else to go, and for the seniors and families themselves who should be able to expect better care than is currently available. And that's a problem that deserves far more attention than Harper's ongoing crusade to force every cabinet minister to resign several times over.