Shock! Old People Aren’t as Healthy as Young People
April 4th 2007 01:17
I kid you not: this is headline news today. The bleeding obvious brought to you at great expense by the Australian government.
It appears that the baby boomers are getting older. Yes, it’s true. Put this together with the fact that older people tend to be sicker than young people and there are implications for health funding. The maths involved is probably able to be done by a bright primary school child or certainly a high school child. Needless to say the report doesn’t suggest solutions. After all it’s an election year and any hint of higher taxes should not even be whispered.
So, is there anything of any real interest? The item of interest I think is that the report admits (it’s not exactly news to those in the field) that most of the extra cost of health care will come from the increasing cost of equipment. All those new tests, those shiny machines, they do not come cheap. And let’s face it; when we get sick we want them.
But let’s turn the tables for a minute. This isn’t really about health at all: it’s about sickness.
What does this report lead the government to do about health? Nothing, absolutely zip, nada, not a thing. If there were any argument needed for improving the populations health this would be it. But . . . the silence is deafening.
What could they do to improve health? Well, there is public education (eg. about diabetes which is rising at truly astonishing rates), or there is taxation (eg. on junk food – some things are being done at school tuck shops), or urban planning (designing cities and suburbs for walking not for cars). More adventurous: paid maternity and paternity leave would possibly make a major impact on post-natal depression as well as stress related illness. To address the increasing cost of medical technology – fund alternatives such as acupuncture (an acupuncture needle costs a miniscule fraction of the purchase price of just one of those shiny machines).
So the solutions to our “crisis in health care” isn’t terribly difficult to figure out. And we can all contribute by being as healthy as we can (not exactly an unpleasant thing to ask after all). Perhaps the easiest way to start is to make room in our lives for a half hours walk each day – intense enough to get us out of breath, not so intense that we can’t speak. After this the options are endless.
It appears that the baby boomers are getting older. Yes, it’s true. Put this together with the fact that older people tend to be sicker than young people and there are implications for health funding. The maths involved is probably able to be done by a bright primary school child or certainly a high school child. Needless to say the report doesn’t suggest solutions. After all it’s an election year and any hint of higher taxes should not even be whispered.
So, is there anything of any real interest? The item of interest I think is that the report admits (it’s not exactly news to those in the field) that most of the extra cost of health care will come from the increasing cost of equipment. All those new tests, those shiny machines, they do not come cheap. And let’s face it; when we get sick we want them.
But let’s turn the tables for a minute. This isn’t really about health at all: it’s about sickness.
What does this report lead the government to do about health? Nothing, absolutely zip, nada, not a thing. If there were any argument needed for improving the populations health this would be it. But . . . the silence is deafening.
What could they do to improve health? Well, there is public education (eg. about diabetes which is rising at truly astonishing rates), or there is taxation (eg. on junk food – some things are being done at school tuck shops), or urban planning (designing cities and suburbs for walking not for cars). More adventurous: paid maternity and paternity leave would possibly make a major impact on post-natal depression as well as stress related illness. To address the increasing cost of medical technology – fund alternatives such as acupuncture (an acupuncture needle costs a miniscule fraction of the purchase price of just one of those shiny machines).
So the solutions to our “crisis in health care” isn’t terribly difficult to figure out. And we can all contribute by being as healthy as we can (not exactly an unpleasant thing to ask after all). Perhaps the easiest way to start is to make room in our lives for a half hours walk each day – intense enough to get us out of breath, not so intense that we can’t speak. After this the options are endless.
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