Alexander De Croo Quotes

Demography is changing us as we are older societies, we're living longer. How the generations balance each other out, how that affects education and health care.

We all understand that we are living longer, and we are more likely to spend more years as frail, elderly people who can't work. We also recognize that the wonderful advances in medicine also come with wonderful price tags. Those are things you can't budget around.

The increasing elderly population, rising expectations about what should be available, and costs of medical advancement—these are problems all countries face ...

The aging and declining population will have far-reaching impacts. Declining fertility rates will possibly increase immigration. The structure of family and society will inevitably change.

People use so much more health care when they live longer.

The life expectancy is much longer today than it was when Social Security was created.

The baby boom is about to become a patient boom.

Aging bodies are fiscal black holes into which you can pour endless amounts of money.

Too many of our senior citizens are being forced to choose between neglecting their illnesses or being impoverished by them.

Just 10 percent of the population—mainly the elderly—consumes about 80 percent of health care expenditures, primarily on expensive chronic illnesses and end-of-life costs. Historically, the longer lives that medical advances have given us have run exactly parallel to the increase in chronic illness and the explosion in costs. Can we afford to live longer—much less radically longer?

With the right care at the right time, a huge number of people could stay independent much longer, with a higher quality of life.

The baby boomer surge is forcing society to face decisions about costs - and particularly what is valuable. It's senseless for clinicians and governments to bear these choices alone; a sad effect of needless paternalism is that it places a false burden on responsible people.

Most people understand life expectancy has changed since Social Security started in 1937 when folks lived to be 59 years old. Today, they live to be 77 years old.

Health care does not worry me a great deal. I've been impressed by some wonderful old people.

People over 100 are the fastest-growing group in America. People soon will be working 'til 100 - some because they have to - and living 'til 125 or even 135. What do I know, I'm just a weatherman, but I've made a hobby of studying this, and it's phenomenal.

Over time, the welfare state has become dysfunctional in a surprising way. But in a way it became a victim of its own success: It became so successful at prolonging life, that it becomes financially unsustainable, unless you make major changes to things like retirement ages.

The great increase in longevity has produced a surge in the desire to accumulate assets for retirement. It has outpaced the ability of the private sector to produce assets, so we need a larger government debt.

It's good to give seniors more choices and more options, let them choose a plan that's best for them and target assistance to the lowest income people.

If there are healthy - and growing - numbers of people working and paying taxes, we are better able to pay the costs of people living longer.

While prosperity and longevity arrive together, they cannot be treated the same. With greater wealth, people in Asia may not have to work as many hours as they do now. But living longer means they will have to work more years, not fewer.

I think about my grandfather who's 89 years old, and the last thing he needs is more money out of his pocket.

When the Australian Government looked at how to meet the challenges, and the opportunities, presented by our ageing population, it saw that an all-encompassing approach was a prerequisite.

Modern medicine has presented us with a Faustian bargain: Our aging bodies can bankrupt our children and grandchildren. We have run into the 'law of diminishing returns' in health care, where we are often doing more and more, with higher and higher technology, at more and more cost, for less and less benefit.

Every industry is going to be affected (by the aging population). This creates tremendous opportunities and tremendous challenges.

Today it has been estimated that the average 70 year old has four chronic conditions and consumes an average of 35 PBS scripts per year for those conditions.