How many of us remember the first time we realized that someday – we were going to die? Most likely you were just a child when you first understood that death was indeed a part of life, understanding what death is at such a young age remains with you. When you finally do “get it”, that you will die sometime in the future, you embark on a quest to add more sand to the hourglass. Knowing how transitory our life is, little wonder humankind has put forth what it can toward lengthening human life spans.
To this point in time, some admirable headway has been managed in the search for extended life. In the year 1900, the average life expectancy in the United Sates was only 47.3 years old. Since we have improved our medicine, clinical practices, hygiene, the food we eat and many other factors that determine our health, we have been able to raise the level to 78.1 years of age. Still, this number is not the world’s best, other countries are doing a better job and outliving the U.S. population. Japan and Iceland being pretty wealthy and healthy nations have usurped top spot and cracked eighty years of age.
What if we could still do a better job of it? What if we could prolong our life expectancy by another ten to fifteen years immediately? This would be a splendid thing indeed, would it not? Perhaps – or perhaps not. The additional years would be nice but could we sustain our lifestyle and economy? What about the environment? How about the added food and general sustenance that we would require? What would become of the many senior elders who are currently being cared for, as well as their families. They are stricken in many cases deriving no joy from their extended years, with the cost of their care increasing along with their despair. What do these added years really mean, more time to enjoy life or just added degradation and misery?
It is impossible to answer this pointed train f thought, however, Science is prone to research and technology allows for predictive intellectual forecasting and statistical modeling. Today there exists a useful life expectancy study tool known as the Future Elderly Model [or FEM], designed by professionals at the Rand Corporation. The FEM procedure begins using today’s population not yet of elder status, and maneuvers variables like health, income levels, employment standing and other factors in order to forecast how they will manage into their older years.
Rand performed on of their FEM models and pretended that a pill became available in 2012 that would raise the life span for anyone over fifty years of age by another ten years. They calculated the data to find out the results of such an event. The information that was returned was remarkable. In the United States alone, there are thirty nine million people who are over the age of sixty five, which is almost thirteen percent of the total population and a whole lot of aging individuals.
By 2011, the front edge of the baby boom generation – already seventy six million strong, born between 1946 and 1964 – will reach the age of retirement at sixty five. The numbers will not subside substantially until 2029. Currently the government expends six hundred billion dollars each year in Social Security payments to people fifty one years or more and a whopping 1.3 trillion when Medicare, Medicaid and disability allowances are added in.
Based on the FEM simulation, the year that the pretend life extension tablet makes an appearance, the population over age sixty five would increase by seven percent more than it would have been prior to the pills introduction or about forty four million. By 2014, this would rise to thirteen percent or forty nine million. By the time the last baby boomer landed on the opposite side of sixty five, the aging population would have bulged to nearly one third of what it would have been had there not been a miracle pill, reaching eighty five million people. The growth increase would start to decline by that time but still by 2080, the last year of the FEM model, there would be some one hundred fifty million people over age sixty five in the U.S. alone – more than forty three million more individuals and all of them seniors.
No surprise then that this grey army will come at quite an expense. Should the life spans increase by ten years in 2012, by 2028 the yearly Medicare expenses by themselves would increase by twofold over current levels hitting the trillion dollar mark easily. They would double once more by 2050 and finally reach 3 trillion dollars by 2080. The combined sum, Social Security and disability included, would be ten trillion dollars by the last year!
Fortunately for us, in reality the true life expectancy rate does not occur with such rapidity as happens with the FEM model but it can still rise quickly as the last century increase exhibited. We might not need to deal with the expenditures that were so dumbfounding with the FEM simulation, but the financial drag to society will no doubt rise as we all start to live extended life spans.
The cost of health increases so rapidly is that just living until you are in your nineties does not mean you will arrive there in a healthy fashion. A study was undertaken by the Commonwealth Fund showed that nearly twenty percent of individuals seeking Medicare already have five or more chronic ailments to contend with such as high cholesterol, high blood pressure and diabetes. The majority of these illnesses are treatable but still cost quite a bit to maintain and every year they are treated is yet another costly one for the taxpayer.
Furthermore, common illnesses have an alarming way of morphing into something far more serious over time. As people get older and continue to develop health issues at the current rate we see them today, roughly fifty percent of the population would be suffering from heart disease alone.
In the event the population was to age in a healthy manner, this does not mean an automatic saving. In 2005, Rand did another study that observed the four most common health risks – hypertension, obesity, diabetes and smoking. They tried to assess what the cost of care might be if the ailments were partially or wholly eradicated in the elder population. The data received was inconclusive. Fully eliminating high blood pressure would save Medicare a sum of 890 billion dollars in the period of 2005 to 2030. Ridding the nation of obesity by half would sock away a further 1.2 trillion dollars.
On the other hand, gaining control of diabetes would cost us a further two hundred forty six billion dollars. If everyone stopped smoking, it would elevate costs by another two hundred ninety three billion dollars. What is up with that? It is ghoulish perhaps but true that these two maladies take away more years of life than either hypertension or obesity. When those years are restored, the elders are with us longer and continue to make claims to Medicare, those payouts might just eclipse what would have been saved by simply eradicating the initial condition. These are known as first order effects and when a person spends more time in retirement, they are a bigger burden on the social system.
One needs to ask if these people who are living longer would be able to work longer as well, thereby contributing back into the social benefits pool. Probably not since most people would likely bow out voluntarily or be forced out of the workforce at retirement age. Based on the FEM evaluation, adding a further ten years of life, and with no changes to the benefit pool, the Feds income tax grab would increase by only three percent by mid 2030 by just six percent in 2080. There is also the question of the type of work available to an aging workforce even if people would or could work longer.
Another slant to the equation is the problem if those older folks did continue to work – would it obstruct the employment situation, meaning fewer jobs available for younger people entering the workforce. This could be dangerous in a tight economy but the experts think this is an overly paranoid belief. Rarely do older and younger applicants search for the same opportunity. However, more service type jobs are becoming the norm over production and manufacturing so there is less importance placed on physical capability.
A more realistic outcome may be seniors in the workforce winding out their careers at a slower pace and junior workers perhaps relieving the job force pressure by assuming roles in organizations such as the Peace Corp and Teach For America. This would be a more appealing scenario if younger people were given some form of inducement to make the initial sacrifice.
The employment and healthcare sectors are not the only areas that a sudden increase in over sixty fives would disrupt, the planet itself would take a hit. The carbon footprint and trash accumulation in the United States is already at dizzying quantities, each of us tosses out about 1,679 pounds of trash every year while producing twenty tons of atmospheric carbon. Now, add another forty three million of us into the picture.
Elder populations are less of a burden on the greenhouse gas issue because they do not drive as much – about sixty percent less than mid age people. Nevertheless, transport in every form only makes up twenty nine percent of the greenhouse gas problem. seventeen percent more is generated by heating and cooling homes not to mention powering them ad we all contribute to this.
Trash also has no age limitation. What you discard throughout the years might change somewhat, but this is not the true problem. The issue is not what is being thrown away but how much of it is being tossed out. When we are young, we tend to discard electronic items while older folks throw out more grocery trash and pharma products.
When the population increases, so too does the need for more food, however this is not so much of a worry as people may think. The U.S. agricultural industry is the most advanced and effectual in the entire world. It generates thirty eight hundred calories per U.S. citizen every day while a nutritious and balanced diet needs only twenty five hundred. Currently America is a major exporter of food and the production levels would not require much of an increase.
Water, however is a different story. Every American consumes on average 160 gallons of water per day and just now, the supply of potable water is diminishing due to increased population levels and drought. For instance, the Colorado River has been tapped well past its capability, it must service twenty seven million people throughout seven south-west states. In just over a decade it will not be able to continue the effort. This is the case in regions all over the United States. It is a fact of life that some areas in the U.S. are only capable of handling a certain number of individuals. That said, there are ways to ration the fresh water resources and serve a growing population.
Regardless of the problems brought about by increased life expectancy and longevity, there are answers to these issues. Water would need to be conserved along with inducements to improve irrigation and commercial – industrial water works. In addition, better management of the regional water markets would mean they could sell water to less prosperous areas.
As for garbage, this can be dealt with by decreasing the amount of packaging and ringing in new recycling programs. Switching to renewable energy systems can cut greenhouse gases and utilizing technology through carbon pricing becomes a more attractive option.
Medical expenses linked to increased longevity can be compacted by a mix of methods like more preventive care and getting rid of the fee for service representation and moving to collective payments for complete procedures. Medicare is already testing a few proposals already in front of Congress with the new health care legislation.
Regardless of what government does to look after an aging population, there is little doubt that the heavy lifting will need to be done by the immediate families of the elderly, who are most familiar with these people. In a report by the U.S. Census Bureau, from the year 2000 to 2007 the amount of aging parents moving in with their kids – the boomerang seniors – increased from 1.4 million to 2.1 million, that is fifty percent. Still, it is less than one percentage point of the entire population but there is no denying the development. With a tough economy and increased longevity, the situation is unlikely to change in the near future. This adds a massive amount of stress into the familial mix, both fiscally and emotionally. Many of these families are raising their own children at the same time, spawning the moniker for these novel family units – “the sandwich generation.”
The big uncertainty for these elder citizens is whether they will have the resources to truly enjoy their autumn years, regardless of where they live. Growing older is not for sissies and as has been pointed out, can be pretty expensive to boot. There is a very good reason why physicians have been pushing patients for years to take better care of themselves. Eating right, getting more exercise and remaining intellectually agile as we get older are all fine but offer no guarantees for life extension. What this responsible care does for us is give us a fighting chance should we win the coin toss and get those extra years we so ardently hoped for as children.
Sat, Feb 20, 2010
Anti Aging, Gerontology, Health And Aging, Longevity