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Friday, March 6, 2009

A taxing problem

In a story printed today in the NT.com here the announcement of another Seniors complex is trumpeted. 118 units of expensive retirement dwellings has passed the first planning stage. Unfortunately Councillor Bill MacDonald reveals his ignorance of the problem of these units by declaring,:"this kind of facility could have an unexpected spinoff in alleviating a situation at Northumberland Hills Hospital (meaning that he thinks the problem of long term care beds will be relieved by these 118 units)"
Unfortunately what he says is pure fiction designed to allow the units to proceed without much delay. Ever since these facilities have been coming to Cobourg in the late 80s all we see is another burden on the local hospital. Retirement facilities are notorious for not providing health-care, why should they after all all they do is provide small overpriced rooms and three squares a day. Sitting outside of the Health-Care system all they do is aggregate the population of seniors and overload the local hospital. There isn't a day that goes past without me seeing, at about wake-up time at the Seniors residence just up the road from me, an ambulance , with its llights flashing, indicating an emergency, on its way to the NHH. Allowing more seniors to be brought into town to fill these facilities is not good unless we know just what the impact on the NHH is going to be. We have never had a Council commission one of these studies before granting permission to have one built - that is wrong.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

What I wonder is whether there is still a buying market for this type of accommodation. Aren't we running out of wealthy seniors? I thought most of them lost a big chunk of their savings in stock market tumbles. You could go broke quickly living in one of these places.

The point about stress on the hospital is a valid one, it should be evaluated as part of the decision making process.
DJO

Anonymous said...

Poor old Helmut Buxbaum was doing just fine with a string of these joints 'till he hooked up with a bunch of London rounders that did in his wife under a highway overpass. But that was the least of his problems. In order to beat the rap he hired -ouch!- Eddie Greenspan.

Still though, there's big bucks in nursing homes, that's for sure. Maybe not big enough to beat a murder rap or ever hope to pay off Fast Eddie -but still...