Study: World not prepared to support growing elderly population

The world is aging so fast that most countries are not prepared to support their swelling numbers of elderly people, according to a global study being issued recently by the United Nations and an elder rights group. The report ranks the social and economic well-being of elders in 91 countries, with Sweden coming out on top and Afghanistan at the bottom. Canada is at fifth place. "In 2011, an estimated five million Canadians were 65 years of age or older, a number that is expected to double in the next 25 years," the report said. The study reflects what advocates for the old have been warning, with increasing urgency, for years: Countries are simply not working quickly enough to cope with a population greying faster than ever before. By the year 2050, for the first time in history, seniors older than 60 will outnumber children younger than 15.

Health-care costs hit the elderly hard, diminish financial wellbeing (USA)

The protection of the savings of the elderly - one of the primary goals of Medicare - is under threat from a combination of spiraling healthcare costs and increased longevity. As the government attempts to reduce Medicare costs, one suggestion is that the elderly could pay a larger proportion of the costs of their healthcare. But exactly how much would this be and what impact would it have on their finances? A new study by Amy Kelley at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and her colleagues, funded by the National Institute on Aging, aims to identify the portion of wealth Medicare beneficiaries spend on healthcare costs in the last five years of life. Their work appears online in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. Medicare provides nearly universal health care coverage to the population over 65. However it does not pay for everything. There are co-payments and deductibles, and more importantly, homecare services and non-rehabilitative nursing home care, which are not covered. If proposals suggest the elderly should make even larger contributions to care, it is important to know more about patients' out-of-pocket spending under the current Medicare program

Seniors in Canada overmedicalized, experts say

Seniors in Canada are overdrugged and overtested, to the detriment of both their health and the health care system, as billions of dollars are being spent that could more productively be spent elsewhere, several experts say. An array of factors is contributing to the overmedicalization of seniors, the experts add, including a simple desire of many patients for pharmaceutical solutions to prolong life or improve sexual performance; drugging seniors to make them manageable in health facilities; overuse of preventive medication; aggressive pharmaceutical industry marketing techniques; questionable clinical guidelines; and prescriptions to offset the effects of other prescriptions. Pharmacists filled an average 74 prescriptions per year for people aged 80 or over in 2005, as compared to 14 prescriptions per year for all other age groups, according to the latest available Statistics Canada data. The Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) says that in 2010, about 13% of seniors who took five or more prescription medications experienced a side effect that caused them to seek further health care services - CMAJ

Pensioners' playground: London to open its first exercise area for older people (UK)

Swinging London will take on a whole new connotation for the capital's aging baby boomers, who will soon get their own specially designed outdoor playground. The park will offer low-impact exercise equipment to help older people improve their balance and flexibility and tone muscles that may not have been tested for decades. "Every park has a children's playground, very few have playgrounds for adults, and none have playgrounds for the elderly," said Madeline Elsdon, whose local residents' association has won funding for the playground, which is planned for London's popular Hyde Park. "We wanted something that would be of long-term benefit to people, so we came up with this idea for an older person's playground." Exercise areas aimed at the elderly are popular in Europe and Asia, and there's already a U.K. precedent - an over-60 playground billed as Britain's first opened in Manchester's Dam Head Park two years ago. Westminster City Council, which gave 40,000 pounds ($60,000) to fund the project, said a sign would identify the area as the "Hyde Park Senior Playground" but anyone of any age was welcome to use it - AP