Let the care games begin in 2010
Year of our Winter Olympics also marks time when most Boomers will have a surviving parent

Michael Kane
Vancouver Sun

Monday, July 19, 2004

Patty Randall

When the Baby-boomers were younger, one of their rock anthems, My Generation, included the refrain: "Hope I die before I get old."

In truth, most of us hope to get older before we die but would rather pretend we are forever young. If we consider our golden years at all, we are more likely to identify with high-stepping 65-year-old rocker Tina Turner than the stereotype senior in a rocking chair.

This tendency toward blissful denial will come crashing down around 2010, says Vancouver author and caregiver Patty Randall.

When Vancouver's Winter Olympics are hogging the headlines, some 60 per cent of Boomers over the age of 50 will have a surviving parent. Compare that to 1960 when just 16 per cent of over-50s had a surviving parent.

Even if boomers continue to act as if they are 20 years younger, their quality of life, their careers and their retirement dreams could be turned upside down by the pressing need to provide long-term care to some or all of mom, dad and the in-laws.

Suddenly those Boomers will confront the fact that they, too, may some day need someone to help them with daily needs as basic as bathing, going to the bathroom, getting dressed and making breakfast.

Many Canadians figure a mortgage-free home will take care of their care years but, if they are like nine out of 10 of today's estimated one million care receivers, they will want to remain in their own homes for as long as possible by having family and friends provide much of their direct informal care and, perhaps, help pay for extra in-home support.

Randall has been doing both for her aging parents since 1996 and has become a passionate convert to long-term care insurance, a product that has only been widely available in Canada for 10 years.

She says insurance can cover the cost of bringing professional care into the home when the time comes, and provide some choices should individuals need to move into a care home.

About 10 per cent of seniors needing long-term care currently live in care facilities across Canada. They either pay the whole tab themselves and choose where they live or wait for a government-subsidized space and go where they are sent.

If they choose the subsidized route, co-payments required from the senior or a family member range from a relatively modest $800 to $1,500 a month in British Columbia to between $3,300 to $6,050 monthly in Prince Edward Island. Inevitably those costs will increase as the population ages.

With her own future in mind, 60-year-old Randall pays $231 a month for long-term care insurance that will contribute $170 a day or about $5,000 monthly to her future care needs.

Her premiums are not much more than she pays for home and auto insurance, yet U.S. research suggests the likelihood of claiming on a long-term care policy is one in three compared to one in 240 on car coverage and one in 1,200 on homeowner insurance.

"I'd say the cost is not so out of proportion, given the risk of needing care at some point in life," Randall told financial planners at the recent Calgary conference of Advocis, the financial advisers association of Canada.

"I would be thrilled to be paying $300 a month now rather than $3,000 to $8,000 a month when I am dependent. It is like that U.S. advertisement that says, 'Long-term care insurance, you can't stay home without it'."

Randall has penned Let's Talk -- The Care Years, sub-titled Taking Care of Our Parents and Planning for Ourselves, based on her own experience taking care of both her mother and her father. Randall's life was turned upside down one day in 1996 when her father fell, breaking his hip, his arm and his hand.

"In your mid-80s, when that happens to someone, it is no longer called an accident, it is called a turning-point incident," Randall says. "That's when the doctors know the senior is going to make a complete turn into the care years."

Her father ended his days in a care facility. Meanwhile, her mother, now 93, developed her own health problems and requires a live-in caregiver and shift caregivers so that she can remain in her home in Kelowna.

Randall quotes a U.S. study which found the average female boomer will spend 17 years caring for children and 18 years caring for her parents. Due to medical advances, much of the care will be given during the boomer's own senior years.

How many would want to change a parent's diaper, she asks, and would they want their children to have to do the same for them?

Yet many Canadians are in denial. They think they will be looked after by the government without realizing that, beyond basic health care costs, government support is limited.

Or they think they can rely on spouses and children without realizing that the economic and emotional toll may be too much for the family to bear, especially if the adult children are still in the workforce, or they still have dependent children.

Unanticipated costs for caregivers frequently include travel, because today's families are more scattered than in the past, as well as the cost of hiring supplementary caregivers, modifying the home for disability, transportation for the care receiver, and supplementary medical costs.

Randall says women are particularly vulnerable because they tend to outlive husbands who may have drained the family's assets for their own care years. Adding to the female financial burden is the fact that women survive for an average of 4.5 years in a care facility, compared to three years for men.

Some 75 per cent of women are divorced or widowed when they die, yet a majority tell pollsters they expect their spouses to care for them if they can no longer care for themselves.

Randall likens the baby-boomer age wave to the Titanic disaster, saying we will hit the iceberg in 2010 when aging parents will require care from their 50-something children. We will sink in 2035 -- in the sense that the medical system will be unable to cope -- when the boomers are clustered around age 75 and start needing care themselves.

But she cautions financial advisers not to try scaring clients into buying long-term care insurance because that approach tends to trigger the fight or flight response in today's sophisticated consumer.

She says it is better to "create concern" just by asking their clients if they know anybody who is receiving care. If they do, the chances are the product will sell itself.

When those aging Brit rockers, The Who, sang about dying before getting old, their message was about acting old and missing out on life. They just didn't want to grow up to become their parents. That's still a valid goal for boomers who don't want to burden their own children with the costs of their long-term care.

As Randall puts it: "None of us can go back and make a brand new start, but every one of us can start today and make a brand new ending."

mkane@png.canwest.com

© The Vancouver Sun 2004