Revised retirement age

mumps

Dunroamin wrote: »

Surely one of the advantages of an increased pension age is that it gives you longer to pay into a private or occupational pension?

Not an advantage if you really want to retire, have planned it that way and then the goalposts move. It isn't even as if it is just the pension, you also have to wait for things like free bus pass and prescriptions (althought I already get free prescriptions due to a medical condition but it would apply to others.)

luvchocolate

sickening I was born in 1952 so not so bad for me, in case anyone is interested we do still get free prescriptions at 60 although we will have to wait for bus passes and heating allowance. I have found at 60 I have been able to reductions getting into some places!!

Bigmoney2

luvchocolate wrote: »

sickening I was born in 1952 so not so bad for me, in case anyone is interested we do still get free prescriptions at 60 although we will have to wait for bus passes and heating allowance. I have found at 60 I have been able to reductions getting into some places!!

You don't get the national buspass until you are eligable for state old age pension, BUT some local authorities still issue local free travel passes at 60, so its worth checking.

http://www.merseytravel.gov.uk/Tickets/concessions/Pages/60+.aspx

xylophone

some local authorities

Transport for London offers a 60 scheme to Londoners under national scheme age. http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tickets/25830.aspx

mumps

luvchocolate wrote: »

sickening I was born in 1952 so not so bad for me, in case anyone is interested we do still get free prescriptions at 60 although we will have to wait for bus passes and heating allowance. I have found at 60 I have been able to reductions getting into some places!!

I didn't know that about prescriptions, I thought it would be changing in line with retirement age like other things. I suppose as I get them anyway I haven't taken much notice.

mumps

Bigmoney2 wrote: »

You don't get the national buspass until you are eligable for state old age pension, BUT some local authorities still issue local free travel passes at 60, so its worth checking.

http://www.merseytravel.gov.uk/Tickets/concessions/Pages/60+.aspx

No luck in my area, thanks for the information though as it might help some. Bus fares are horrendously expensive where I live.

atush

jamesd wrote: »

Some of the COX-2 NSAIDS may have had a deleterious effect, increasing the chance of heart attacks and strokes. But it's a fairly small effect, not a massive one, and the population most affected was already relatively old, since arthritis is a major use case for them.

Thalidomide was another one that had somewhat broader consequences and as a result of that we have more caution about drug use in pregnant women and children.

Kidmugsy, such things are possible, but for contrast note that the England and Wales death rate is the lowest its ever been. See the overall England and Wales death count of around half a million a year and the long term downward trend. It's not impossible for something to upset that - say BSE long term consequences or something related to AIDS but more readily transmitted, or an unusually potent flu. But to have a long term effect on death rates it can't be a one-off event, it needs to be something ongoing. Like smoking or obesity, perhaps.

Personally, as a medical research scientist, I don't consider side effects of drugs (including teratogenic effects) to be 'deleterious effects of medical advances. I consider them drug side effects, which can be either managed or negates use in certain populations (such as teratogenic drugs Not being used on pregnant mothers).

For me, deleterious effects would be effects of actual medical advances, not individual drugs/therapies.

One that I can think of (but caused by human error not the advance itself) has been the rise of antibiotic resistance in some disease agents due to misuse (over prescription and not finishing a course) of antibiotics.

But the huge number of lives saved annually and in t he past from antibiotics means the overall effect on LE was greatly positive.

atush

kidmugsy wrote: »

"Barring a new deadly infectious disease ... other really cataclysmic event": it's very easy to imagine a new viral disease that stops well short of "cataclysmic" and yet kills a lot of people. The Spanish Flue did after WWI, for example. To assume that life expectancy must keep roaring ahead seems to me to be just thoughtless complacency.

I personally agree and expect there to be a future mutation in an Avian Virus or other such animal virus to cause a global pandemic such as Spanish flu (which was a mutation).

After all, Aids may very well be a mutation of a similar milder virus that affected monkey populations.

Proxy

atush wrote: »

I personally agree and expect there to be a future mutation in an Avian Virus or other such animal virus to cause a global pandemic such as Spanish flu (which was a mutation).

After all, Aids may very well be a mutation of a similar milder virus that affected monkey populations.

But how do you even begin to build in these kind of scenarios into mortality tables?

The answer is that you can't, really. You don't know when, you don't know where and you don't know how many.

atush

You can't, I agree.

But I also don't feel there is need to worry about 'deleterious effects of medical advances' either ;-)

I expect LE to continue to rise, unless obesity continues to rise (esp in the young).