The Japanese government is set upon reducing welfare expenditure. One of Japan's new government's senior members suggested that the elderly are an unnecessary drain on the country's finances. Taro Aso, the finance minister, said that the old people should be allowed to "hurry up and die" to relieve pressure on the state to pay for their medical care. "I would wake up feeling increasingly bad knowing that [treatment] was all being paid for by the government," he said during a meeting of the national council on social security reforms. "The problem won't be solved unless you let them hurry up and die." He referred to elderly patients who are no longer able to feed themselves as "tube people". The health and welfare ministry, he added, was "well aware that it costs several tens of millions of yen" a month to treat a single patient in the final stages of life. It is not the first time Taro Aso, one of Japan's wealthiest politicians, has questioned the state's duty towards its large elderly population. In 2008, while serving as prime minister, he described pensioners as tax burdens who should take better care of their health. "I see people aged 67 or 68 at class reunions who dodder around and are constantly going to the doctor," he said at a meeting of economists. "Why should I have to pay for people who just eat and drink and make no effort? I walk every day and do other things, but I'm paying more in taxes."
The 72-year-old, who is also the deputy prime minister, said he would personally refuse end-of-life care. "I don't need that kind of care," he said in comments quoted by local media, adding that he had written a note instructing his family to deny him life-prolonging medical treatment. Taro Aso has led the life of the privilege few. He is the grandson of Shigeru Yoshida, an influential postwar prime minister, and is married to the daughter of another former premier.
A quarter of the 128 million population is aged over 60. The proportion is forecast to rise to 40% over the next 50 years. The number of households receiving welfare, which include family members aged 65 or over, stood at more than 678,000, or about 40% of the total. In 2010, 4.6 million elderly people lived alone.
In the UK, two out of five girls born today will live for a century, and boys are close behind. In the UK, average life expectancy for both sexes born today is over 90. One suggestion proposed by Professor Kaare Christensen, of the Danish Ageing Research Centre, is to extend working lives by shortening the working week. It would be a way of keeping more people socially engaged."Preliminary evidence suggests that shortened working weeks over extended working lives might further contribute to increases in life expectancy and health."
Gulliver's Travels features a race of humans, the Struldbrugs, who were normal in all respects except one – they did not die. But their immortality, instead of being a blessing, was a curse, because they continued to age. "At 90, they lose their teeth and hair; they have at that age no distinction of taste, but eat and drink whatever they can get, without relish or appetite. The diseases they were subject to still continue... the question therefore was not, whether a man would choose to be always in the prime of youth, attended with prosperity and health; but how he would pass a perpetual life under all the usual disadvantages which old age brings along with it."
The good news is that despite increases in cancer and chronic conditions such as diabetes and arthritis, earlier diagnosis and improved treatments have rendered these conditions less disabling. In the future, more of us will fall ill, but the illnesses should affect us less.
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