Lavejez, ¿un futuro desprotegido?de las políticas públicas a la incertidumbre

Résumé

To speak about the future of the elderly is to speak about a non-existing future. Or at least from a protection, health, social services and pensions' point of view. There is a thought, ideology and politics school who is permanently emphasizing the existing contradiction between the idea of extending life and the sustainability of this given the costs of health and social services, pensions, etc. Nowadays, the more conservative schools assure that this sustainability cannot be guaranteed by the public system but only through private investment. No institution with economic interests seems to be against new research advances and resources in the medical, pharmaceutical and geriatrics fields, as far as their consumption is funded by the elderly people themselves. Financial firms and insurance entities often incite to think that, in a society where the active population does not guarantee the traditional producer-pensioners equation, public pensions can only be sustainable by investing in private insurance and not in the actual public pensions as vested rights able to satisfy the needs of those elderly people with enough capacity to live their older age with dignity. Privatizing tendencies in health care, social services and pension schemes, are opening and widening the gap of inequality and precariousness and consequently increasing the vulnerability of the elderly. The same ideologies that alarm about the sustainability of public policies often defend that, being families the first institution with the obligation of providing support to their members, they play an important role in terms of offering protection.