Ceilidh

Michael Zey
futurist3000@aol.com

Star-Ledger Staff

Scientific efforts to help people live 100 years and beyond could have a negative impact on their quality of life, creating poverty and hunger as these centenarians outlive their financial resources, according to a published report authored by a New Jersey health policy expert.

Over the next 25 years in the U.S., 1 in 5 people will be over 65 years old and 16 to 20 million will be over 80, said Donald B. Louria, chairman emeritus of the Department of Preventive Medicine and Community Health at the UMDNJ-New Jersey Medical School in Newark. He predicted that poverty and near-poverty rates will double between the ages of 65 and 85 as these people run out of money.

"The numbers of older people who are frail will increase, they will utilize a large percentage of the health-care dollars and will often have an unsatisfactory quality of life," Louria states in the paper.

His report, "Extraordinary Longevity: Individual and Societal Issues," appears in the September issue of the Journal of the American Geriatric Society.

According to Louria, the scientific advances on aging are moving at such an extraordinary pace that the potential for people to live 110 to 120 years, or even beyond, "no longer is science fiction." But he said there are concerns that this longevity could raise a host of societal issues.

For instance, he said health-care costs could become unaffordable. Currently, 85-year-olds use more than double the amount of health-care dollars compared to 65-year-olds, thereby raising the possibility that those over 65 may eventually use 75 percent or more of all health-care money spent in this country, Louria added.

Not everyone agrees.

"If you look at the reason for the skyrocketing health-care costs, the aging of the population has little to do with it," said Meredith Mink, professor of health and social behavior at The School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley. "It has to do more with the immense profits to be made in the health-care industry ..." she added.

In his paper, Louria suggests that a strengthened Social Security system -- with some sort of mandatory savings during working years -- could help provide adequate financial resources for an ever-growing number of elderly. He said keeping people in the labor force for a longer period of time -- even if they must work from home -- will also help.

"If we start to plan and act now, we have a reasonably good chance of successfully coping with our aging society," he said. "If we delay and dawdle, especially with the accelerating pace of scientific advances, the likelihood of successfully coping will be markedly reduced."

Louria said more preventive medical care aimed at reducing top killers like cancer, heart disease and stroke could also have a major impact on the aging process.

Today in Cherry Hill, leading social aging research scientists and geriatricians are wrapping up a two-day conference sponsored by UMDNJ, laying the groundwork for a large-scale study involving upward of 10,000 older New Jersey residents. The individuals would provide essential demographic, health and behavior data that could be used by professionals, including those involved with geriatric health care.



Angela Stewart writes about health care. She may be reached by e-mail at astewart@starledger.com or by calling (973) 392-4178.




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