The pressure for major reforms to the way the Federal Government funds aged care in Australia continues to mount. The Productivity Commission Report into aged care in Australia in mid-2011 highlighted the inequities and inefficiencies of the current system. It also indicated the huge demand building up for aged care support. Now information released by the Minister for Mental Health and Ageing, Mark Butler, highlights the failure of the funding.
In 2011 the Federal Government only provided funds for an additional 1698 in-home aged care places and admitted a shortfall of this independent living service of at least 22,000 a year. On the other hand, there was a shortfall of2000 places in nursing homes that were not taken up. This shortfall was due to the lack of capital investment in new nursing home places. It might seem simple to switch the funding from nursing homes to in-home services but this is not, it appears, as easy as it seems because the in-home services last for many more years than the average nursing home services so a long-term budget problem is created. At the same time, the costs of all aged care continue to rise to create a serious budgetary blow-out over the next few years. It is fairly obvious that solving this problem will be a major element of the Labor Government’s re-election platform.
