Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Ryan Bridge: We're all living much longer - but at what cost?

Transcript

Ryan Bridge: We're all living much longer - but at what cost? · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: We're all living much longer, aren't we? At what cost?
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: That's my question for you this morning. At what cost?
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: A report out at the weekend, human life expectancy has
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: just about peaked, They reckon globally it's lights out, goodbye.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: On average for women between eighty seven and ninety, men
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: you'll make eighty four. In New Zealand, men you'll make eighty.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: Women you'll make eighty three, which is great, longer life.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: Every one wants one. Right now, we're told that we
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: also have a health system in crisis, people waiting in
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: waiting rooms, they can't afford to see a GP. Over
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: the weekend, they read about a family of a man,
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: a family man carpenter from Westport, sent home hours later
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: dead and lots of dil or. A month ago. Remember
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: that man died in the waiting room, the emergency department
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: waiting waiting. So we don't have enough resources for health
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: or we're not optimizing the resources that we do have
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: to meet the needs, and we're being overwhelmed by them.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: And we have a huge aging population. The number of
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: people sixty five and over, which was around seven hundred
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: thousand a few years back, that will quadruple by mid
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: twenty four quadruple the number of people ninety and over
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: thirty one thousand. That will quadruple in twenty years, So
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: we'll have one hundred and twenty five hundred and thirty
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: thousand ninety plus year olds in New Zealand. Now, if
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: you're a doctor, you've got two people, both as sick
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: as each other. One's forty, one's ninety one might die
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: if you treat the other first. What do you do?
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: Serious question? I mean to me, The obvious answer is, well,
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: one person has had ninety years on this planet. You
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: know you treat the young one first, don't you? Because
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: the older ones had more life to live. Am I
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: saying let's stop treating patients based on need and discriminate
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: against the elderly. No, because I love my great mother,
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean. We have to do it
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: on who's sick, us, who's closer to death, all that
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: sort of stuff. But I am curious for those who
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: work in healthcare, is there a touch of bias on
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: who you might treat first. I know you've got the
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: hippocratic oath, etc. But if you if you're presented with
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: a situation like that, how do you respond to it
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: for more from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge. Listen live
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: to news talks it'd be from five am weekdays, or
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: follow the podcast on iHeartRadio