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Ryan Bridge: Paying for our ageing population · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: It's obvious to anyone paying attention that in the coming decades,
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: and even if you're not paying attention, it's just logical
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: in the coming decades we're not going to have enough
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: young people working to support the cost of health and
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: super for the elderly. All this is spelled out in
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: a Treasury report which Thomas Coglan published in The Herald today.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: This is not new, We've known this for a long time.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Future governments will either have to take a sledge hammer
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: to spending on health or raise the age of super.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: And the obvious answer, I think is to raise the
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: age of super. Don't worry, not immediately, not tomorrow, but
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: raise the age of super not going to happen, of course,
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: of all Winston's around. But the other thing we could
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: cut is our expectations boys born. This is stats in
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: the ZA data. Boys born in the early nineteen sixties
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: who were reaching sixty five now ish could expect to
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: live to around seventy nine years on average, and girls
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: eighty three. Boys worn in the early twenty twenties, so
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: you're freshies could expect to live to eighty eight years
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: on average, girls ninety one years on average. So we've
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: added about ten years to our lives. This is very
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: expensive and it's only going to get better or worse,
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: depending on how you look at this problem. Now. I
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: was speaking to a woman in her seventies this week.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: Now I won't name who firmly believes that when you
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: reach the age of eighty, you must choose the pension
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: or healthcare. We can't afford both. How can we afford
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: to fill our hospitals, keeping you know, eighty plus year
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  Speaker 1: olds alive and keeping paying their pensions and not send
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: the country bankrupt? Is her point. And she's older closer
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: to eighty than I am, much closer. I know it
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: sounds jarring. I know it sounds cruel, But isn't it
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: fair to ask how we plan to fund the very
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: expensive long lives that we are now planning to live, which,
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: by the way, was not the intention when the pension
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: was set up when it was universal. The age has
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: blown out massively, hasn't it, So I think it's fair
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: to ask the question, at least, how do we confront
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: that problem? For more from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge,
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: listen live to News Talk Set B from five am weekdays,
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.