The baby boomers - babies no more

What unites all of us, baby boomers, Gen X, and Gen Y are the travelling companions of ageing and death. We are all getting older. Some of us fight it with passion. There is a robust anti ageing industry trying to sell us lotions and potions to ward off the ravages of time. We have toxic strains of bacillus injected into our faces and fat from our butts put into our lips. We have sacs of salt water shoved under our skin to enhance our profiles, it is no longer good enough to have white teeth; these days they have to glow like a white business shirt under an ultra violet light at a discothèque.

For some, the quest for eternal youth leads them to a healthier, if somewhat obsessively compulsive life style; but for far too many of the baby boom generation, things are not quite so promising when it comes to ageing and death. Self-satisfied baby boomers have swollen the ranks of the morbidly obese, those with type 2-diabetes or cardiac disease, or indeed all three maladies. The legacy of this trend has been passed on to their children as well. Those are changes, profound and far reaching, that the baby boomers will be reluctant to include in their legacy.

Advances in science have allowed us, in many instances, to trade off death for disability. Many of us are living with things that 25 or more years ago would have killed us off. But now, thanks to advances in medicine it is the baby boomers that linger on. And with that lingering will come increased demand on aged care services, however fashioned. Some of that demand will be for residential care but there will be increased demand for home-based services as well.

Before the global financial crisis it might have been safe to assume that many of the baby boomers would be better prepared for ageing. Many would be better superannuated, better informed about choice and more able to navigate the maze that is the aged care system. Now however it may be the case that all the information, education, and consumer savvy with which many baby boomers are brimming is useless given that they have collectively poisoned their own and everyone else’s economic well. Neither themselves, nor the nation, will be in a position to care for them in the manner that might have once been expected.

There will be an emergent ageing bubble needing care, but now we all have a diminished capacity to pay for that care whether it be in a residential setting or a home centred program. And those in need of care will require more complex management thanks to good medicine.

Three factors will combine to generate a state of unmet need in aged care when the baby boomers are in need of aged care services - and some of them are there already. The first is that the numbers are simply rising, as everybody knows. The second is that within the ranks of baby boomers are large numbers of ageing people with the onset of, or already have, more chronic diseases. Third there will be an increased number of ageing baby boomers who once might have been self-sufficient and been in a position to be less reliant on government funded services. These will each add pressure to an already struggling industry.

Right now there is reduced capital available to build new bed stock or refurbish existing bed stock. Already a number of large aged care providers have advised the Commonwealth that they would not take part in the recent aged care approval rounds for new licenses for beds. Money is too tight and no doubt their investments have taken a hit like everybody else. So, at the same time that there is a rising tide of potential demand, the brakes have been firmly applied to growth that has been, or would have been planned to, address the emergent need.

Falling house prices present additional difficulty for the aged care industry as many aged care providers invest bond monies, held in trust for residents entering low care facilities, into new building stock. The coffers are replenished with new bonds from new residents. Therefore, falling house prices are likely to leave some providers with a cash flow problem.

So when it comes to the baby boomers, it will be the next generation or so that will determine what have been the real changes brought about by the baby boomers. We can only hope that they are as kind to us as we have been self congratulating about ourselves.