In our view: N.B. will find it hard to independently afford health costs for aging population

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Who is going to pay the staggering health-care costs to look after our seniors in the coming decades?

Hint: It can't be the provincial treasury alone. Ottawa has an important role to play.

The federal government must look at providing additional funding to provincial health-care programs based on senior populations.

If we're not self-sufficient in another decade or two, New Brunswick won't be able to independently afford skyrocketing health-care costs for seniors.

There will be too few workers to support too many seniors. For the federal government to honour its commitment to equality of care across the country, it will need to cough up some cash for New Brunswick.

As a first step, the federal government must study a proposal to fund provincial health-care programs based on the number of seniors in each province.

University of New Brunswick Prof. Joe Ruggeri told a Senate committee this week that Ottawa must earmark cash specifically for seniors' health care in the Canada Health Transfer program.

He said the current system is funded on a per capita basis, regardless of age, but it generally costs more to care for seniors.

The result? A province such as New Brunswick, with a high proportion of seniors, needs more money per capita to care for its population as opposed to Western provinces, where the populations tend to be younger.

Yet the federal government gives every province the same per capita amount, regardless of the median age of the population.

The costs of caring for seniors can be staggering. According to the Canadian Institute of Health Research, the cost of caring for a 70-year-old Canadian is about $5,400 a year.

Fifteen years later, the cost of caring for that same senior jumps to $20,000 a year.

What does that mean for New Brunswick taxpayers?

Ruggeri said by 2015, it will cost about $225 million to fund health care for seniors. In eight years, that figure is expected to double to $500 million.

Keep in mind that money will have to come from a workforce that is projected to shrink. By 2026, about 180,000 of New Brunswick's population will be seniors, or about 30 per cent.

The working-age segment of the population will not be able to afford these health bills on its own. The federal government will need to help.

We're not sure how these fiscal realities will play into Premier Shawn Graham's dream of a self-sufficient New Brunswick by that time. Graham foretells a future of more workers and more immigration, but we need to start planning our future based on the data available now.

And that data is telling us that it's time for the provincial government to lobby Ottawa to ensure our seniors' golden years aren't tarnished by an underfunded health-care system.