by David Stipp
“I guess I don’t so much mind being old, as I mind being fat and old.” — Peter Gabriel
Our rising life expectancy has been nice for those who like being alive, but it seems a bummer for society as a whole. Even if Social Security doesn’t go bust as baby boomers slowly saunter into the sunset, their massive Medicare costs seem likely to crush the economy. Not surprisingly, further major gains in longevity, which researchers on aging have recently achieved with drugs in animals, is about the last thing deficit-obsessed policymakers want to see happen. Accordingly, less than 0.5 percent of the National Institutes on Health’s annual budget is allotted to basic research on aging.
But the idea that anti-aging researchers are tinkering with an economic Frankenstein’s monster rests on a conventional wisdom that is actually a mass hallucination — namely, the notion that when people live longer, they rack up greater health care costs.
Here are the facts: People who live an unusually long time tend to be healthier during their later years than shorter-lived people. That means longer-lived ones typically have lower medical costs during their golden years. This health dividend more than offsets the health care costs they accrue by outliving less healthy people.
The proof came out in 2003 in the New England Journal of Medicine. Analyzing Medicare data, federal researchers showed that elderly people in good shape at age 70 — meaning they had no difficulties performing tasks of daily living such as walking and shopping — could expect to live to 84.3, and after 70 they had average, cumulative health care bills totaling $136,000. In contrast, less healthy 70-year-olds with at least one limitation in daily-living activities could expect to live to 81.6 — nearly three years less — yet had cumulative medical bills of about $145,000 during their shorter remaining lives.
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“I guess I don’t so much mind being old, as I mind being fat and old.” — Peter Gabriel
Our rising life expectancy has been nice for those who like being alive, but it seems a bummer for society as a whole. Even if Social Security doesn’t go bust as baby boomers slowly saunter into the sunset, their massive Medicare costs seem likely to crush the economy. Not surprisingly, further major gains in longevity, which researchers on aging have recently achieved with drugs in animals, is about the last thing deficit-obsessed policymakers want to see happen. Accordingly, less than 0.5 percent of the National Institutes on Health’s annual budget is allotted to basic research on aging.But the idea that anti-aging researchers are tinkering with an economic Frankenstein’s monster rests on a conventional wisdom that is actually a mass hallucination — namely, the notion that when people live longer, they rack up greater health care costs.
Here are the facts: People who live an unusually long time tend to be healthier during their later years than shorter-lived people. That means longer-lived ones typically have lower medical costs during their golden years. This health dividend more than offsets the health care costs they accrue by outliving less healthy people.
The proof came out in 2003 in the New England Journal of Medicine. Analyzing Medicare data, federal researchers showed that elderly people in good shape at age 70 — meaning they had no difficulties performing tasks of daily living such as walking and shopping — could expect to live to 84.3, and after 70 they had average, cumulative health care bills totaling $136,000. In contrast, less healthy 70-year-olds with at least one limitation in daily-living activities could expect to live to 81.6 — nearly three years less — yet had cumulative medical bills of about $145,000 during their shorter remaining lives.
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