Posts Tagged ‘Baby Boom’

Baby Boomers Crippling the Health System?

Thursday, August 26th, 2010

You might have noticed the recent story in the newspaper about boomers crippling the health system.  It was based on a poll commissioned by the Canadian Medical Association. The headline on the story in the Globe and Mail was “Most fear boomers will cripple health system”.

After reading the story and thinking about the poll results, I can only conclude that the headline writer didn’t actually read the story, which was written by Andre Picard, a very good reporter. One of the concerns suggested by the poll was this—“the health system will not be able to offer the same level of coverage as the baby boom generation reaches retirement age”. 34% of the poll respondents were very concerned about that, 45% were somewhat concerned and the rest weren’t concerned.

Put another way, 65% of the poll respondents were either not concerned or only somewhat concerned about the central question. How does this translate into fearing that the boomers will cripple the health system?

64% of the poll respondents were not concerned or only somewhat concerned that they might have to pay more taxes to provide health services to the baby boom generation. 67% were not concerned or only somewhat concerned about not having enough money to maintain their health as they grow older.

It was a ridiculous headline.

And here are two more ridiculous headlines, on the subject of the abandonment of the long form Census by Stephen Harper (note: not the Stephen Harper government—that is a redundancy): the story in the Vancouver Sun is headlined “Acting StatsCan chief slams voluntary census”. The same story in the Globe and Mail on the same day is headlined “Voluntary survey will still be useful, acting Statscan chief says”.

Stats Can keeps repeating (no doubt under orders) that the voluntary survey “can meet the needs of many users”.  What I would like to know is: who are these users? The voluntary survey is not going to meet the needs of my company or our industry.

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