Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
I want to thank everyone for their excellent presentations. You've identified some of the core issues that we need to talk about. One of them is the issue of aging at home.
I was recently at the Baycrest conference in Toronto. They said that from their research, when you take a senior out of their surroundings.... Because their surroundings always help them remember: when they see a picture or something familiar, they keep their memory together. When you take them out of that and put them in a nursing home, all of those little markers that used to prompt their memory are gone. They become quite confused and disoriented and start to go downhill after that, so it isn't whether the quality of care of the nursing home is good or bad, it's that this is a major factor in moving people out of those surroundings.
You've talked a lot about home care, community care, long-term care models, and collaborative models, which I know the college of family practitioners is now speaking about: integrated models with multidisciplinary teams that are managing chronic illness in the community. But in order for that to happen.... I know that during the 2004 accord there was money put aside to do some of those projects, to see what worked and what didn't work. We now know that this kind of system works.
I would like to hear your comments on whether you see this being a huge piece in the 2014 accord. Would you like to see this change? How would you like to see it change?
On pharmacies, you've said that the cost of providing prescription drugs is exorbitant. There's the concept of looking at a pharmacare plan. Again, that was in the 2004 health accord. It is essential, for it to move forward, to look at how you can provide necessary medications for people who can't afford them anymore, especially as we become seniors.
Dr. Pringle, you floated a very interesting plan about a long-term care act and a long-term care insurance fund. I'd like to hear you elaborate on that a little more, because I think that is what we have to learn to do: to provide care outside of a hospital, as you say, in a facility that is appropriate and that gives the right kind of care, and by a person who is not necessarily a physician, because the Canada Health Act is physicians and hospitals.
One final question--