Rest Homes Should Be Families' Last Stop, Not the First

Summary

---

GROWING OLDER is not getting any easier in this country. In fact, for many elderly New Zealanders the future is bleak and looking bleaker. At the end of a productive, useful life, it is not too much to expect a roof over your head, food in your stomach and care when it is needed. Yet it seems that the cost of all this is way beyond a joke and the pockets of the politicians, who are only too ready to relieve younger taxpayers of their hard-earned dollars and redistribute the wealth in other directions. Obviously, the elderly do not rate well in the vote-catching stakes, so looking after them has been put in the too-hard basket. The $18 million recently earmarked for aged care is a mere drop in the bucket, say those who get the money.

It all hinges on money. Most of those who enter private rest homes do so because they can no longer live at home and need to be looked after. But these are not hospitals, even though the majority of their funding comes from the government's health budget. The first and main aim of rest-home owners is to make money -- they want a return on their investment. Aged-care properties, say investment advisers, can return more than 9-10%, making them a very attractive business proposition.

See the full content of this document

Extract

---

Rest Homes Should Be Families' Last Stop, Not the First

There were 491,600 over-65s as at December 31, 2004, according to Statistics New Zealand and th...

See the full content of this document

---