You’re Going to Live for Ages and it’s Going to be Really Expensive

This week Treasurer Joe Hockey claimed that it wasn't too much to ask Australians to pay more for health case as we'll probably all be living to 150 soon anyway. The comment drew smirks and Opposition Leader Bill Shorten even quipped he'd had a "Sarah Palin" moment. But Joe Hockey's crazy talk isn't that crazy.

In the past few months several studies appear to have turned a corner on drug studies that could see us living considerably longer and healthier lives. In December last year a study exploring the anti-aging potential of the drug Everolimus showed it could extend the lifespan of mice by 9 to 14 percent. It not only delays the onset of ageing, but when administered to older mice the drug reversed or improved age related issues like "tendon stiffening, cardiac dysfunction, cognitive decline, and decreased mobility."

In Australia, the University of New South Wales' School of Biomedical Science is making similar and straight up sci-fi progress. In the past year they linked the reduction in our bodies' ability to produce specific vitamins with the beginning of the aging process. Once those decreasing vitamins are identified, it's a comparatively simple matter of supplementing them as you would with any other deficiency. Without that drop, the ageing process doesn't appear to kick in. By doing this with mice they've managed to slow or pause the ageing process by 20 to 30 percent.

The UNSW study also shows an improvement in the animals' mitochondria to the point they're healthier than they were when they were much younger. It's early days, but it's evidence that ageing can not only be slowed, but even reversed.

It sounds far away, but Dr Lindsay Wu who worked on the UNSW study told VICE that drugs like this being administered to humans and taking on ageing is something we should "expect within our lifetimes". Although unable to give an exact sense of how long an individual could expect to extend their live with the treatment, Wu is confident this will lead to the largest jump in life expectancy the human race has ever seen. But he stresses the consequences will be more complex than being around for a handful more birthdays: "I think it will change the way that society works. We'll be paying for people who live longer. Can we justify people being on the old age pension when they're perfectly able bodied?"

Although Joe Hockey's suggestion that people would be living for 150 years is still a bit of a stretch, Wu notes that "it's a good point that he raised that we'll have to pay for people living a lot longer."

Ralph Lattimore, Assistant Commissioner for the Productivity Commission, headed up a 2014 research paper looking at the effects of an ageing population that's living longer. He told VICE "Current healthcare costs no where near compensate for the increased obligations for government. So there will be a substantial increase in our budget deficit unless we found ways of cutting expenditures, increasing taxes, or having different funding for health or aged care."

The aforementioned paper reported that before 2060 the number of Australians over 75 will rise by more that 4 million, increasing from 6.4 to 14.4 percent of the population. Worryingly they found the total investment needed over the next 50 years to account for what is estimated to more than five times "the cumulative investment made over the last half century". Privately we're hardly ready either, HSBC's Future of Retirement report stated Australians are already estimated to run out of savings within 10 years of finishing work.

Those figures are also working with the present Australian life expectancy of 84 for women, not even beginning to take into account the reality that Elysium-esque drugs could push it past 100.

The obvious response to control rising taxes and healthcare costs is for people to work longer to ensure they can finance their own extended lives. Ralph adds, "People are living longer which invites the question of whether a pensionable age of 65 or 67 is a realistic age if people are going to have almost as many years outside the labour force as they did inside." His suggestion is that we abandon our expectation that the pension age is set, but rather allow it to freely change in line with our life expectancy boom.

Sure that fucking sucks because you might get stuck working into your 80s if your generation is looking particularly hardy, but it could also stop you paying ballooning taxes to balance the cost of people retiring and realising they can't afford to live for another half century.

Extended life and health is something humans have been questing after for eternity, but while we were dreaming of playing tennis into our 90s, fiscal social planning hasn't kept up with scientific advancements. Our advice, take the good news with the bad. You'll live for ages, but it's going to cost you.

Follow Wendy on Twitter: @Wendywends