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

Some younger people don't seem to realise that when they are older they will still be the same person inside. Your body may be failing but the essence of who you are remains the same.

I still want to ride the rollercoasters at Alton Towers even if my body screams in terror at the thought of the 4 hour car journey to get there let alone the whiplash from the ride. I still want to be picked to be Mary in the nativity play. I still want my mum to bring me chicken soup and luncheon meat sandwiches when I 'm sick. And I still haven't decided what I want to be when I grow up.

Oh I agree with you. All these older people who insist on living longer, costing us money and cluttering up the human race. Why can't they do the rest of us a favour and just die instead? It would be so much cheaper than ensuring and financing a social setup that supports vulnerable people (like civilised countries do).

The issue is (genuine, unpressured) choice, which some on here don't seem to want.

Suggestions by PPs of blanket limiting medical treatment for all over 80s. Regardless of their individual health circumstances and personal wishes around whether they'd prefer the option of assisted suicide, or instead decent pain relief, palliative treatment, and good social care.

The choice of assisted suicide should imo be available (for adults with capacity of all ages in the circumstances you mention) but should never be suggested as an alternative to properly funded public services.

That's not ok. It is eugenics. Horrible, and it absolutely is a slippery slope.

With 'the cost burden' of NHS and social care, my point in previous posts is relevant. Poverty, and also lack of effective and timely support increases the need for medical and social care in older (and younger) age.

All ages would have a better quality of life if the false economy approach was dropped. Good well-funded public services, supportive benefits system including pensions, affordable housing, and more work, education, and training opportunities. It would cost initially, but pays off and saves money in the end.

It's a real eye-opener on this thread the way some people are arrogantly assuming that a person past a certain age and in a certain state of health could not possibly have quality of life or want to live any more. Who do you people think you are to make this pronouncement on behalf of other people whom you do not even know?

In his final illness my dad was in constant pain and debility, unable to do the vast majority of things he used to enjoy, and yet he stated very clearly (no dementia btw) that he was not ready to die yet and wanted to hang on as long as possible. He was, quite rightly, helped to do so by the NHS until the end. But according to the scenario that some here are positing, presumably the hospital staff would have adopted a position of 'Tough luck, you're 84, you've had your time, and although you've been paying into the system for almost seventy years we are stopping your treatment as younger people need the resources. Don't be selfish, old-timer, off you pop.'

How would the 'the old have had their time' brigade feel if they were in that situation? Because I'm not sure I believe these breezy assertions of 'I'd be on the first plane to Switzerland'. How can anyone who isn't already elderly or dying possibly know for sure how they would feel in that scenario? But oh no, let's decide for 'the old' that the value of their existence is over, shall we? Because, y'know, they've had their time.

Honestly, the sheer arrogance of the assumptions being made by some on this thread makes me sick.

It’s so hard to watch this happen. People have no idea of the trauma - both for the person suffering and those watching.

Pain is not always controlled and the side effects of the top shelf stuff are horrendous.

I agree there should be the option to bring about a gentle end to this suffering but anyone who dares say this is practically called a Nazi by those who deliberately choose to misunderstand in order to promote the ‘slippery’ slope’ argument.

You know, this one sent me off to do some research.

This type of scenario was covered when I did a first aid course a few years back and, where I live, this would be counted as "failure to assist" and yes, in the situation you described you would be prosecuted for murder.

If you are physically able to assist in such a situation you are legally obliged to provide that assistance or you must do your best to organize assistance.

Incidentally, I live in Germany, where quite a few laws have been determined with Germany's Nazi past in mind. As in, to ensure that such a past can not be repeated.

Many other countries have comparable laws. The UK is actually in the minority here.

Not aimed specifically at the poster quoted, but more as a general observation: I find the eugenic thinking of quite a few posters on this thread to ve pretty shocking.

Goes without saying. However our governments seem to prefer making themselves and their mates rich.

They always say they’ve no money but they can make it appear from nowhere when they want to.

State occasions - covid payments etc . Do they have a magic money tree?

@Rosscameasdoody ,
DNR only covers resuscitation after the heart has stopped. It won’t stop you being sent back and forth to hospital, kept going via drips, etc.

If you want to specify that in x and y circumstances, you want no life saving or life prolonging treatments, you need to add it to a P of A and make sure your family are well aware, too.

It really depends on the health of the 75 year old .
There are 75, 85, even 95 year olds still mobile and relatively pain free.

However, generalising too much is useless here.

There are people who are suffering daily with physical pain.

No point in saying oh they should have better pain relief, medication etc.

Even getting the attention of a medical professional is extremely difficult.

And God help you if the new tablets have side effects - you’ll wait and wait…

Young people already can't afford the basic things we took for granted 20 years ago. The public sector can't work like it used to.

As my posts above point out, the same goes for plenty of older people (because as the links explain, all age groups are diverse including social and financial circumstances).

I agree though that cutting funds to public services and not investing in affordable housing is a false economy. For all ages.

With older people it's not just pensioners. Over 50s are a hard hit group. This is a ticking time bomb because they're the next generation of pensioners, and are going to go into pension age in poverty and poor health (the two issues are interlinked, because poverty affects health). Age discrimination from employers towards the over 50s plays a large role here.

Failing to properly fund public and support services, and affordable housing, means a lack of timely and effective help. Which means people fall into and stay in worsening poverty and poorer health as they age. Which then ends up costing those public services, including the NHS and the benefits bill, more.

Related issue is the attitude that people who can't afford housing or find work opportunities in their area should all move somewhere else (which doesn't help anyway, as it just spreads the problem and adds pressure on housing, public services, and jobs elsewhere).

The mass displacement breaks apart communities, and it means the more vulnerable groups including the elderly and disabled are isolated from their families and support systems. So less able to have informal practical help and care, but also isolation especially for vulnerable groups affects health. Which means more, and more costly, need for NHS and social care.

The problem (for all age groups) is the false economy approach.

Young people already can't afford the basic things we took for granted 20 years ago. The public sector can't work like it used to.

More from Age UK on London (and older people poverty in the UK in general).

Women are particularly affected it seems. Single pensioners too.

We know that the poverty rate for single pensioners is double that of couples.

Pension age women tend to have higher poverty rates

As Independent Age shows, since 2012 there has been a slow but steady rise in income poverty among older people and movement in and out of poverty mainly due to a loss of social benefit income.

And pensioners who enter poverty didn’t have high incomes in their working lives and those groups who are at greater risk of poverty in later life also have greater risk of entering poverty past State Pension Age.

The other noticeable trend is that inequalities within older generations are some of the most extreme in society.

Rich pensioners have seen their wealth increase, but the poorest older people experienced a drop in their wealth.

As I pointed out in previous posts,
The problem is also simply grouping all older people together as impoverished

@Itsrainingten Regarding London.

According to Age UK
The capital has the UK’s highest rate of poverty for people of pensionable age.

The proportion of Londoners in poverty before housing costs is higher among the 80-84 age group than in any other age group.

Older Londoners are as diverse as any other age group and face significant socio-economic inequalities impacting all aspects of people’s lives. (Exactly my previous point about the ridiculousness of lumping large numbers of people into one group just because of their age)

24% of Londoners of pensionable age live in poverty (a quarter of a million people).

This is a 5% increase since 2017 and 7% more than the rest of England average.

One in 10 Londoners of pensionable age have lived in persistent poverty for at least three out of the last four years.face significant socio-economic inequalities impacting all aspects of people’s lives.

More than one in three fuel poor households in London include at least one person of the age of 60.

One on five pensioners in inner London Boroughs are unable access basic necessities such as a damp-free home, access to a telephone or having hair cut regularly

4 in 10 older Londoners don’t claim Pension Credit even though they are eligible. That’s over 125,000 Londoners missing out.

There are no atheists in foxholes (sic).

Your wish to live and keep going, your fear of dying and death and wanting to avoid it as much as possible, it's all there.

Only for some people. I have no fear of dying and want to live only as long as I have quality of life. I’m 70.

we get people at 75 or 80 making the kinds of decisions that people at 20 might make
Or the decisions that those 20 years old will likely make for themselves when they reach 75.

When we are young, we can't picture ourselves getting to our 50s let alone our 70s and 80s.

We assume that by then, just like our body and brain slow down, so do our feelings and emotions.

Well a lesson for the youngsters: they don't! You feel just as strongly as you do when you are young. Your wish to live and keep going, your fear of dying and death and wanting to avoid it as much as possible, it's all there.

I think a lot of posters might think back about what they wrote here when they reach that age and feel very ashamed of their 'younger times' views.

There is a lack of NHS/Council resources because of cuts to social care budgets.
The budget was increased by 5% last year BUT thats a real terms cut of 1%.

Yet Sunak boasts of cutting taxes by £31 billion.

Plenty of money, we ve just got twisted priorities.

This isn't the same where I live (London) here's what I just found online:

Of the three age groups, children have the highest poverty rates, with 33% of children in London in poverty in 2021/22, compared to 22% of working-age adults and 23% of pensioners. In London, poverty rates for children and working-age adults fell between 2011/12 and 2021/22.

This is something that was added to another post (about the NHS) it wasn't me that wrote it but I think it sums up pretty well why it's right that we don't or shouldn't routinely do the sorts of major and expensive surgeries/ interventions on the elderly as we do on the young.

"there is a lot of benefit to be had around thinking about what the real outcomes and goals of healthcare are as people age. It's not just about the money either, it's about what makes for good care. Personally, I think the money element isn't really the point at all, it's just a result of the more basic problem of trying to work against the natural, and inevitable decline of the body, which always in the end has to fail to deliver.

If we imagine that somehow we can fend off death inevitably, or medical interventions will really put us back to feeling a lot better, we will tend to take one approach to medical decisions. That's how we think with kids most of the time, almost until death is imminent - old age is too far away for natural death to be a consideration, and if disease is beaten there may be a really high chance or good quality of life, a long life full of human experiences, and a real improvement in condition. There is often good reason to go full on with medical interventions, even if some are invasive and involve suffering.

When that's the reality, an 80 year old suddenly faced with medical decisions might make very different decisions than a 20 year old.

The usual approach is to let people make these decisions themselves, which theoretically is sound, but because culturally we don't really deal with the realities of inevitable decline and death,we get people at 75 or 80 making the kinds of decisions that people at 20 might make. Often medical staff don't really help them understand the realities around the outcomes of the treatments they are proposing. We have over the last half century or so added about a decade on to people's lifespan, but it isn't necessarily a healthy decade - often it's beset by illness and poor quality of life."

Care to elaborate?

Interesting thread. I don't think it's disputed that the ageing population and the demographic timebomb to come is a very real and well documented phenomena. It's already generating unsustainable costs. But we have cut almost everything else and the country is in a pretty terrible place. Wealth distribution is going to be essential but what I don't know is how much of these extra costs can be covered by taxing the wealthier? Could they all be covered or would we still be short?

Unfortunately yes and to many children

You have totally misunderstood my post

Separate from 'boomers', older over 80s (including DH's parents) aren't boomers. I understand their 'label' is the Silent Generation, and they definitely didn't 'have it good'.

The Silent Generation were born before the NHS and welfare state, went through the second world war as kids, also rationing (which didn't end until the 1950s), and there was lots of slum housing.

Also the majority started working between ages of 14-16, and only a small minority went to university. This is relevant to 'boomers' and 'Gen X' too.

'Boomers' aren't all in the same circumstances.

I don't like lumping loads of different people into one group just because of their age so don't pay much attention to what ages are considered a 'boomer' nowadays, but if it includes people in their 60s, then they're the poorest group

State of Ageing 2023 highlights that, among UK adults, people aged 60-64 now have the highest rate of relative poverty (25%).

This below is about all pensioner age groups (so not just aged 60-64).

The report also details that the average annual income of the poorest 20% of retired individuals is below the minimum amount needed to live on.

Relative pensioner poverty is at one of its highest rates (almost 18%) this century and is more than four percentage points higher than a decade ago.

It means that 2.1 million pensioners in the UK have an income that is less than 60% of the national average.