When did growing old become so bloody complicated?
Do you remember when retirement meant slowing down, putting your feet up, enjoying the rewards of 40 years’ work?
Today, it feels more like a full-time job
This week’s news tells the story. Health insurance changes. Super confusion. Pension traps. Aged care delays. Endless paperwork. Algorithmic assessments. Rules that seem to change overnight. The only people enjoying our retirement are the consultants we hire to explain it.
Paying More, Getting Less: Governments struggle with the cost of public health, while asking many older Australians to pay more for private health insurance just when they are most likely to need it.
Punished for Working: Australia says it needs experienced workers, but taxes pensioners at rates of up to 106% if they earn too much. Somewhere, common sense has taken long service leave.
Super Slowdown: Experts say it should take no longer than three days to switch from one super fund to another once all the paperwork is complete. Some retirees report it can take months.
Fatal Mistakes: Three residential aged care residents die after being given other residents’ medication by mistake. Victoria’s coroner, Ingrid Giles, found that aged care residents remain at risk of harm unless national medication safety standards are introduced.
Support at Home: Introduced to help older Australians live safely and independently at home, this program, instead, leaves many abandoned and left to die before they can get help, according to evidence given to a Senate inquiry a few days ago.
Whose Nest Egg?: When compulsory superannuation was introduced in 1992, many Australians believed they were entering into a long-term bargain with the government: “Save your money. We’ll look after you when you are old”. Now, retirement consultant, David Saul, wonders if the bargain has changed amidst a raft of new rules and regulations. He asks: “Are private retirement savings still viewed primarily as an individual’s provision for retirement? Or are they increasingly being seen as a national resource?”.
Hard Work
Each of these stories contributes to a gloomy picture of a retirement system which is hard work for anybody to successfully negotiate let alone its intended clients. The result is that people give up. They miss entitlements, delay seeking help, stop working and learn to distrust the people and institutions responsible for providing help.
Complexity has become a policy failure in its own right.
Finding Utopia
Every developed country faces the same problem. People are living longer while birth rates fall. Yet some countries seem to make ageing feel easier than we do.
Norway coordinates services. Japan designed aged care specifically for an ageing population. Switzerland and Germany are often applauded for their innovations.
None has found perfection, but they understand that older people shouldn’t need a degree in public administration to retire.
Fragmented and Failing
Last week, I reported a proposal by former Prime Minister, Paul Keating, who argued that the provision of super and the aged pension should be integrated under a single umbrella. His proposal drew a circle around the inherent flaw in the way we deal with ageing. The system is too fragmented. Health is one system. Super another. Add Centrelink, aged care, and housing all with their own forms, rules and websites. Complexity, confusion and inconsistencies become inevitable.
The solutions are not simple, but here are 5 things that would start to make growing old easier:
- One front door. One national ageing portal, not 50.
- Simpler language. Government documents written for retirees rather than lawyers.
- Stability. Stop changing the rules every budget cycle.
- Reward work. Stop penalising pensioners who want part-time jobs.
- Design around people. Not departments.
Finally, begin building an integrated retirement system that makes the whole system easier to understand and negotiate.
None of these ideas is revolutionary. That’s is probably why they haven’t happened. Can we at least agree on one thing? Retirement should be a stage of life. Not another profession.
Have you experienced a recent “complication”. Leave a comment.
