What are the most critical issues facing seniors?

I thought the following question was interesting and so I summarized the answers given on the E-Street Question:  posted  JUNE 25, 2012, if you are interested in the full responses you can go to the source: 

Source: Go here for the full answers

Housing Issues

• Many seniors are providing daycare for their grandchildren so that the parents can work or study. We need a childcare system that parents can access
• Housing Issues
• Affordable Housing
• Seniors Low cost Housing in next to impossible to find
• Lack of adequate home-care

Health Care Issues

• Seniors need affordable housing and better health care.
• Better Healthcare
• Home support programs
• Assisted Suicide, which makes it cheaper to fund a death, than to save a life
• Seniors wait longer than others to receive most “elective” surgeries, such as hip & knee replacements, cardiac procedures, and spinal surgery.
• Seniors, having paid taxes and provincial healthcare premiums all their lives, receive less consideration from our system than do their own children and grandchildren, who may have contributed nothing. The current “hurry up” program to provide timely hip & knee replacements, only applies to patients under 80. Those people older than 80 remain on the bottom of the list.
• The issue of senior abuse, whether that be from family or caregivers
• If you are not covered with extended care like us, you're in deep trouble, financially. It would be a major improvement if seniors did not have to face prescription costs. 
• Health Canada and its allegiance with the pharmaceutical industry.
• Affordable, accessible, timely health care prescription drugs should be covered so that people don't have to pay $1,000 per month from their retirement income. Preventive medicine makes a lot of sense
• Increasing physical and mental health issues, care centers for the old and infirm struggle to satisfy the needs of those with dementia, Alzheimer and chronic illness. These Care Centres are facing increasing challenges; the hiring of adequate numbers of capable, well-educated staff: trained Administrators and Social workers, RNs and LPNs and Care Aides with geriatric training and above all a propensity for loving the care of aged, frail, and infirm seniors
• Senior abuse as well as seniors health are some of the most important issues affecting seniors in this province. In addition, there is a lack of short term and long-term care facilities for seniors.
• They need and deserve decent housing and Healthcare! If they are living in a Government Facility, they lose 80% of their income
• Access to health and social care, housing and transportation, isolation and loneliness, elder abuse and navigating our complex system of services
• The cost of prescriptions and the availability of medical care
• The waiting list for a Senior to see a referred to Specialist is interminable
• Reliable health care. This would apply especially to extended care facilities.

Debt

• Employment opportunities to supplement pensions
• Age discrimination by people who think they should be put out to pasture.
• Currently, there are a large number of people over 65 who either have minimal funds saved for retirement or no funds at all. 
• Fixed, usually low, income, spiraling cost of living.............you do the math.
• The costs of housing, food, and gasoline are among the critical issues of seniors
• There will be hundreds of thousands of us living in extreme poverty.
• The ever increasing monthly rise in the cost of living compared to the amounts that the pensions pay out and when pensions go up ; they don't really go up as the cost of living goes up 3 x's faster than any increase any one ever gets.
• Living on a fixed income with all of the taxes imposed by every level of government: local, regional, provincial and federal
• The erosion of spending power of the meagre dollars that they get in their pensions
• Financial stability
• The never ending tax and fee increases, with fixed limited income for seniors is certainly a huge problem.
• Housing and heating has become so expensive that most people struggle to find enough money to pay for basic monthly expenses such as food and medications

Lifestyle

• The sense of entitlement to high-quality care neither they nor taxpayers can afford when their lives as retirees exceed their working lives.
• Lack of adequate affordable housing, from preserving current home to a menu of specific types of housing to meet needs
• Programs to eliminate loneliness
• Aging with dignity, means better programs/homes for seniors
• Seniors deserve a level of respect and care commiserate with their age and sacrifices.
• Educate Seniors that their health and wellbeing are directly linked to exercise and diet. Encourage them to enter the 21st century with computer literacy.
• Have the government and the agencies that are intended to provide all levels of assistance and support, ensure that our elder citizens are afforded the respect they deserve
• Seniors stories deserve to be told. There is a wealth of knowledge and experience that will go untold if they remain isolated in their homes or in nursing homes. Go back to the old days of a nursing home - that was a home, not an institution.
• Not all seniors have large pensions, own their home or can afford the health care that increases with age
• Training for an elderly future should begin at the high school level. Subjects could include: financial planning and investing and basic cooking
• Seniors need independence to choose, the ability to participate in their own destiny, the right to self - fulfillment, to live out their life in dignity, while receiving the highest quality of care .

Government policies,

• Seniors must choose: pay for rent or food or medication. The Canadian Nurses Association just publicly denounced lack of economic security as a major cause of poor health. *Ed. to note
• Municipal Policies along with deteriorating infrastructures drive seniors out of their homes.
• User fees, high taxes, and government waste. Government spending is out of control, and seniors are being stiffed with health care premiums, carbon taxes, etc.
• Governments’ persistent increasing of the gap between rich and poor by giving tax breaks only to Big Business
• Pensions have become a sick joke with most pensioners either going to food banks or eating food that is not nutritious enough to keep their health up.
• Governments slapping up Casinos everywhere
• The cost of living. Governments continue to ignore the fact that there are too many seniors living under the poverty line. They offer us tax credits, but those credits are useless to those not making enough to take advantage of them.
• Harper needs to address the issue of pensions to ensure that ALL Canadians seniors get to live the ending of their lives in comfort, security and peace.
• Everyone pays taxes on employment income – why should seniors also pay taxes on pension benefits? Health care costs are a big issue. Many seniors are having to make do by living on incomes below the poverty line. The cost of living increases 3 or 4 or 5% – politicians get nice fat increases, Hydro can increase their rates by 3 or 4% yet many seniors are living on fixed incomes and do not get any increase in their income.
•  The lack of acceptance for residency applications of Canadian doctors, studying abroad, who want to return to Canada and practice in remote communities who so dearly need physicians.
• One central information line would be best... you phone there and get redirected to where and what you need - it could save a life