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

[Futurascope]

Possibly controversial…,

https://www.itv.com/news/2024-05-14/one-in-three-councils-not-confident-they-can-provide-basic-adult-social-care

“The fears about meeting the legal requirements come despite eight out of 10 councils forecasting having to cut spending on other community services such as parks, libraries and leisure centres to try to protect funding”.

So - libraries, leisure centres, parks, all vital for young children, families and others - being closed because the elderly desperately need social care.

As awful as it is for us all individually to lose somebody that we love….. is curing every disease, and having us all live to 100 really a good thing if it is at the expense of quality of life for the rest of society?

There is no cure for death and there never will be...thank god. I don't understand people who want to live forever.

Really interesting, thank you

Brilliant unexpected consequence, we can get rid of the in-laws too! (/s)

Social care is decimating councils' budgets. Hence why other services and obligations are failing. An example is the crumbling roads.
What do we as a society want? Is it possible to offer the services we do to every man woman and child. I certainly feel the UK needs a mindset change regarding familial obligations to our family members rather than assuming local government or private entities will take care of our parents.

Some countries have a better family structure, we look to the state.

This.

Human like robots for personal care is an awful idea. Robots don't care or have empathy like humans do. We all need the human touch when old and ill.
I have done care and would chat to my patients.
Just pay carers more ffs!

This place gets sicker every day.

I think the answer to the question is that you are focusing on the wrong issue. Prolonging the health and life of people and its effect on society can be managed, if the bottomless greed of the rich, and capitalism gone amok, can be first managed. There's nothing trickling down, it's all being sucked up.

I work in social care and in my LA the social care bill is far larger for LD.

Placements in LD costing £25k a week in some instances and these are young people who will continue to cost that much or more for their life time- the elderly generally only use social care for a few years when they're older if at all.

So perhaps we should euthanise all the young people with high care costs? Maybe do it at birth to save getting attached.

There is no line - we are a civilised society, or at least we are supposed to be.

This.

basically people have learnt nothing from Covid.

I'm in my mid sixties and would rather pop my clogs quite soon than go on until I'm 80 or 90, unfortunately other people seem to think differently.

Have you been watching “Logan’s Run” OP? 😂

I have some sympathies with your stance.
Firstly I have a major issue with many people trying to avoid paying for their own elderly care. When I am old I want to use any assets I may have to provide for myself. There are too many people wanting to 'pass money on' because 'they earned it'. A view that care should be provided because of dues paid over a working life. But clearly the state cannot support this in reality. If we paid for our own care and those that could saved properly for it it would leave more funds for those that can't. I don't expect to use the state for my elderly care and then still pass on a hefty inheritance.
Similarly there is some debate to my mind about medical interventions late in life. Or extending life at all costs. There needs to be a quality of life debate as well as a length of life debate. As a society we need to talk to our families and discuss their wishes much earlier in life to understand how and when a DNR would be used. We also need to get better at ensuring the right trusted relatives have LPAs and so can make these informed decisions.
We are generally terrible at discussing death and having frank conversations.

Yeah, capitalism is the problem - capitalism is always the problem.

But assisted dying will soon become euthanasia by stealth, as family rationalise and guilt-trip their grandparents (with the help of the media) into doing the decent thing so they can inherit and their children can have libraries, and so they won't be a burden on the state.

At least the boat people won't be getting all the blame any more.

So that's alright then.

Look out! That old person is gonna take your biscuit!

I think views on this are probably shaped by the life of the grandparents and other elderly people you see around you. My grandmother was fit and very independent including driving well into her 80s. She had a fantastic old age and I’d love to have my 80s like hers. Cancer then took her quickly but she suffered in the end and absolutely hated losing independence. Once she had a terminal diagnosis she would have been a good candidate for euthanasia with a clear-cut point but at least her decline was quick.

By contrast my husband’s side has seen a lot of dementia and long periods of decline and low quality of life. It is harder to know at what point in those circumstances id have wanted to end things as they all still took pleasure from life on the early days of the disease but good to a point where care was needed ans they were existing not living. I found it much more upsetting because of low quality of life they experienced for so long.

The last year for one of them was very hard- a lot of falls, pain and being in and out of hospital and the care homes. At that point you really wondered what the system was doing prolonging life eg flu jabs, antibiotics for infections etc. I would seriously consider putting in an advance directive that I didn’t want any treatment of that kind If I had dementia. A bout of pneumonia would be a quicker death than the prolonged dementia one. Watching someone lose their swallow reflex is pretty horrible tbh.

You may not realise it, but your line of thinking is very sinister. Like, eugenics - level sinister. Best that we don't even go down that cognitive road. It's never ended well.

We recently had a scenario where a lot of people could have been offed but there was a massive outcry about it especially on here, I wonder if it's the same people that now don't want to pay for these people to live.

It’s a very complicated and emotive subject. But actually important to raise and discuss as it’s certainly the case that people are living longer artificially as the advances in medicine have been incredible.

Spending time in a dementia home with late stage sufferers (all of whom pay for their own care) shows zero “quality of life” by my definition.

I can’t find another word to describe it than cruel and whilst families may think people want to be kept alive at any cost I doubt any sufferer would agree.

It’s time for the laws in this country to be updated to allow medically assisted dying whilst people have the cognitive function to be able to make that choice.

Totally agree. My FIL nearly died of pneumonia, instead he was treated aggressively in ICU and his vascular dementia took a massive step and he will in all likelihood die of dementia and Alzheimers as he has both. Slowly and with little quality. It would have been kinder not to treat so agreesively. But per my post earlier no discussions had ever been had with him so saving his physical life was all the hospital could do.

The funds are there. The will isn't. It is a matter of priorities.

Improvements in medical care, for people of all ages, have led to us expecting more amd more. Alas, even without the tories stripping the NHS, it's not sustainable long term.
At one end of the scale we have more and premature babies surviving and at the other end of the scale we have people living into their nineties or even hundreds, and then there are always new (and often expensive) therapies for a whole host of condition - who decides if one group is less deserving?

I would seriously consider putting in an advance directive that I didn’t want any treatment of that kind If I had dementia.

I’ve done it. And refuse the pneumonic vaccination because it confers life time immunity.

During Covid anyone that didn't go to all lengths to save these people was called a murderer.

They are not. In fact we got now this quality of life because they worked their arse in their working life.
Taking money from libraries etc to put it in to care, is like having a bad cough and put a plaster on your pinky to solve it, useless.

Well the statement isn’t incorrect but the hard part is what do you do next?

People are living longer now due to medical advances etc