To think that people living longer is making quality of life for everyone worse?

There’s an enormous middle ground between acknowledging a procedure costing tens of thousands of pounds for an already frail 91 year old is disproportionate and then ‘killing people’.

I think you know that.

I agree tbh.

The infrastructure needs to be changed to accommodate the ageing population. Not the other way round!
The ageing population argument is identical to the immigration argument.

You don't seem to understand this is a conversation about how to use finite resources. Not "getting rid of oldies".

85 is an age when you accept that palliation is enough and chemo, organ transplants, hip replacements are not proportionate.

So 85 is when we start killing people? Or presumably if you need any healthcare after 85 you are refused on the NHS?
Nice to have a number for a change. My 97 year old gran who was still mobile until her last month alive would have died then. I am sure her great grandchildren would have understood she was just a useless waste of resources.

The care home staff may call an ambulance, that is down to the care home policy. But there will not be any aggressive treatment by the hospital. The issue is the care home, not the NHS.

What used to happened to my relative with a DNR and a “no extraordinary measures attitude” was that they’d have a bit of a turn in the evenings when inevitably the more senior staff had gone home, so an ambulance would be called, the quickest way for the paramedics (and the care home) to make it someone else’s problem was to ship them off to A and E, despite the fact that they wanted no treatment. Then it was nearly always an awful time in the hospital before they were returned to the home a few days later in a worse condition than they went in. We found refusing treatment wasn’t at all easy to do. They’re afraid of being sued for something I suppose!

That you start paying into when? When you're born? Because I was diagnosed with my disability at the age of 16. So would I be covered? Doubtful.

£70kish I meant

I haven’t RTFT but the situation seemed simple when presented by Theresa May. You buy a care insurance policy that costs £70-ish which would cover you should you need care. Seems sensible and fair.

🤣

what a way to go though.

Are you in that position? I was and still am. I've had to wait years for my hips and knee replacements. Ask me if I begrudge the 90 year old woman who was on her feet quicker than me when I was in hospital after waiting for 2 years with a brace because her hip kept dislocating. Should she have just been left?

@BeetyAxe
Exactly what you said.

No one is saying kill anyone off. Merely that there is inadequate resource to fund everyone. Some people miss out. Those who have lived a full and long life have had their turn. And elderly people are so, so, so expensive in healthcare terms. I would not want to be kept alive at 85 while 50 year olds are immobile and out of work waiting for knee operations.

At the moment, working age people either have to pay privately or fall out of work because of lack of NHS resources.

I don't agree. it's more of a broad view. not simplistic. The UK values the individual liberty of the person above the family unit. Care homes have been around for decades, this isn't related to the cost of living. This is wholly down to expectations of how much 30% of your salary will cover.

The UK has always seen the care of the elderly for instance as a problem for the state. This now developing into an existential crisis. 50% of the working population is subsidised by the other half. It's not sustainable.

I know in my family and DP's for instance we've borne the burden of looking after our elderly. we're also making plans for the eventuality of taking care of them in the future. That includes dementia and other complex problems.

You're more useful than this 30 something. Yet the 'kill them all offers' haven't responded to my posts weirdly

It's also support for the chronically ill (into the bin with them); the mentally ill, including mentally ill children (into the bin), the disabled (bin) and many others. You are asking for a society where only the fully robust are allowed to live and get any support or help. Not a society I want to live in.

I'm a fit and healthy 74-year-old. I work, I pay taxes (as I have all my life), I support my DCs with their children and am just as useful as a thirty-something, thank you. Ask the question again when you approach 70 yourself.

I'm actually a supporter of assisted suicide becasue there are illnesses I don't want to suffer and ways I don't want to die, but any society that writes off the so-called 'unproductive' is not a society any of us should want to live in.

I wouldn't be at all surprised, given current Dystopian rhetoric and slow withdrawal of health and social care across the board, if we don't see an uptick in suicide and family annihilation due to lack of hope and any sense of future. It could be already happening but not being reported.

Will there be a shift from the opinion that those actions are due to a diseased mi and, to a rationalisation that it's the right thing to protect resources? I mean, if you think past the protection of millionaire's bank balances this could be where we're heading.

I'm not in favour of prolonging life at all costs. I agreed with HCPs to pull the plug on the live of my life just over two years ago after brain bleeds due to undiagnosed cancer that left him quadriplegic and in a coma that there was no hope of recovery from.

But that's not what these hard, pragmatic threads are really about, is it? It's about deciding whether sentient conscious humans with challenges and vulnerabilities should be reduced in number by limiting care at any point. Hide behind the sentiment of preventing suffering if you like but it's more about greed than anything else.

What the hell is wrong with people?

But the rich can still presumably find a way to pay for it privately though? What kind of society would that create? I think this whole issue is like opening Pandora's box.

My Gran is 91. Has had one functioning kidney since the 1960s and a ileostomy since the 1980s.

She lives alone but currently has her DC meeting her needs for shopping etc but the time is rapidly approaching that she'll need additional care.

She's not ill, she's not dying, she's just really old. No-one is keeping her alive but her. She's supposed to take medications but doesn't She's got a 95 year old sister still alive and her elder sister died aged 99 in 2020 after surviving covid.

My Gran is one of many. Very, very old and needs or will need some social care but isn't ill or being kept alive.

When AI is used more and more to triage every aspect of the value of human life according to algorithms designed by humans to protect "resources" from the many and for the few, will everyone be happy? I mean, computer says no, and are completely unbiased.

Just how content will you be with resource based rationalisation when you fall into the "unworthy group" for some minor infraction?

There is a movement in which people decide to stop doing medical tests at 75 or 80

They want to die without prolonging life.

I have watched quite a few people in their 80s suffer terribly with a plethora of ailments.

I’m more of an overdose plus plastic bag over the head type as I doubt I’ll be able to afford dignitas.

I would prefer if there were voluntary euthanasia but others disagree so sufferers continue to suffer and endure pain so the ‘voters against’ can feel good about themselves.

I have a friend aged just over 80 who walked several miles a day, mostly running errands for other elderly people. She had a fall and broke her hip. While she was recovering she needed carers. Now she is walking again and back to running errands, albeit more slowly and with a walking frame.
But obviously she should just have been euthanised when she had the fall, or at the very least denied treatment 🙄