The CREEi working paper #21-04, entitled “Les impacts financiers d’un virage vers le soutien à domicile au Québec,” has just been made available online.
Written by Nicholas-James Clavet, Réjean Hébert, Pierre-Carl Michaud, and Julien Navaux, it explores reform scenarios for the support of the autonomy of the elderly in Quebec, which all involve a shift towards home care and services, and presents an assessment of their impacts. The analyses show that substantial savings could be made by implementing the proposed reforms.
The authors suggest creating an autonomy account, which involves giving an amount to the elderly who are losing their autonomy. This amount would be in an account, and it could be used to purchase the services of a home support provider. With this account, the number of hours of service financed by the public sector is modulated according to the needs of the person, which helps to ensure the horizontal equity of the system. Finally, the authors discuss the possibility of modulating public funding according to the financial resources of the person in order to improve vertical equity.
