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Americans Are Dying Younger, Saving Corporations Billions (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Steady improvements in American life expectancy have stalled, and more Americans are dying at younger ages. But for companies straining under the burden of their pension obligations, the distressing trend could have a grim upside: If people don't end up living as long as they were projected to just a few years ago, their employers ultimately won't have to pay them as much in pension and other lifelong retirement benefits. In 2015, the American death rate -- the age-adjusted share of Americans dying -- rose slightly for the first time since 1999. And over the last two years, at least 12 large companies, from Verizon to General Motors, have said recent slips in mortality improvement have led them to reduce their estimates for how much they could owe retirees by upward of a combined $9.7 billion, according to a Bloomberg analysis of company filings. "Revised assumptions indicating a shortened longevity," for instance, led Lockheed Martin to adjust its estimated retirement obligations downward by a total of about $1.6 billion for 2015 and 2016, it said in its most recent annual report.
Mortality trends are only a small piece of the calculation companies make when estimating what they'll owe retirees, and indeed, other factors actually led Lockheed's pension obligations to rise last year. Variables such as asset returns, salary levels, and health care costs can cause big swings in what companies expect to pay retirees. The fact that people are dying slightly younger won't cure corporate America's pension woes -- but the fact that companies are taking it into account shows just how serious the shift in America's mortality trends is.
Mortality trends are only a small piece of the calculation companies make when estimating what they'll owe retirees, and indeed, other factors actually led Lockheed's pension obligations to rise last year. Variables such as asset returns, salary levels, and health care costs can cause big swings in what companies expect to pay retirees. The fact that people are dying slightly younger won't cure corporate America's pension woes -- but the fact that companies are taking it into account shows just how serious the shift in America's mortality trends is.
Thanks to sugar in the Standard American Diet (SAD).
These so called evil socialist countries meanwhile laugh at us while their death ages grow and do not worry about losing their retirement over a medical issue
http://saveie6.com/
The conspiracy theorist in me can't help but think about all the pressure to cut healthcare costs, and about food corporations pushing high-carb, high-sugar foods, and the entertainment industry with all its incentives to become a couch potato. Corporations get to increase profits in the short term, and reduce costs in the long term when people die prematurely. No, there's probably not a conspiracy per se, but it may not be entirely a coincidence either.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
But for companies straining under the burden of their pension obligations...
I have no idea what the pension obligations are for the massive multinational I work for, but I do know profit was up nearly 7% to US$14 billion in the last year, so I don't think straining is quite the right word.
1. Because markets
2. Go die!
What pensions? What companies still give pensions? I'm not aware of any US companies that give pensions.
I don't respond to AC's.
Nobody except government employees get pensions anymore. Perhaps it's a government conspiracy? I'm pretty sure the Republicans would encourage people's unhealthy habits under the guise of freedom.
Gotta love the bigotry coming from people living in those supposedly 'tolerant' and 'progressive' nations.
I mean the guys who own the big companies, who put one of theirs in the white house, don't need educated, healthy people any more. That's why education is failing, and our health care/insurance system is such a disaster. Smart people are harder to control (witness the IQ of the average Trump supporter), so they create a two stage strategy. First they get everyone under 30 deep into student loan debt because they want the money that the baby boomers would otherwise leave to their kids. The reaction is the second part- people start to question the value of education, which leads to more of them avoiding it. Now they discover an unexpected benefit - reduced lifespans mean lower pension obligations. It's a win-win!
Eat The Rich!
I wonder if this has something to do with the infant mortality breakthroughs that started roughly 20 years ago. There was an article, I think in the WSJ, a few weeks ago about how mortality of 20 year olds has spiked because of the advances in neonatal care that would have normally killed them as small children.
What happens is you get an infant with a replacement heart valve, or kidney transplant, who grows up fine, but once they switch to a regular doctor, that doctor is inexperienced dealing with patients that young with those sorts of conditions. For example, usually someone with a replacement heart valve is in their 50's or 60's and is relatively inactive, or engages in light exercise. Now you have a 20 year old with a replacement heart valve and they are going out scuba diving or running marathons. Is that safe or risky behavior? Should they try to take it easy, or is that worse than remaining active? There's no data to make a good judgement.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
like that. And most people agree the government should ensure everybody has healthcare. Notice how I worded that. I can ask those same people the same question with different wording and get a different set of answers. Heck, a recent poll showed only 25% of America trusted our president but 33% approved of him. Those numbers don't add up...
Also I think they're improved diet and lack of smoking/drinking comes more from having less poverty. We've been gutting our anti-poverty programs for 30+ years. Junk food is cheap. Cigarettes are cheap (and subsidized). Booze is cheap. Education? Not so much. Not in America.
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who says i'm from a progressive tolerant nation
that they haven't managed to gut by closing down the company (Hostess, I'm lookin' at you). It's a lot of money somebody else is going to pocket.
I'm looking forward to them going after the VA & Military pensions. It'll work too. They'll pit the current enlisted folks against the new folks just like they did with the old and new employees.
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Social security and medicare. Die early, save the government thousands. Act like lemmings, save them billions.
What's a "Pension"?
Dying young is my retirement plan A.
The amount of my savings I will have to spend after retirement is staggering.
They will take my office keycard from my cold dead hands.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
The whole concepts of pensions and retirements is artificial, modern and soon to be not relevant.
Both pensions and retirement came about in the last century during a period when the lifespan was much shorter. Social Security is the same. It was planned and set to be a date when most people would already be dead. Since then lifespans dramatically increased which put a huge burden on SS & pensions.
Retirement is not necessary. What happened in the bygone years is people shifted from more active to less active tasks as they got older. This makes more sense than stopping working all together.
There is a coming time when people will live a lot longer and may live practically forever. When that happens the whole concept of pensions and retirement makes absolutely no sense, even less sense than it does today with people living for 20 to 30 or even 40 years beyond their working years.
We don't know what's causing this but we know for goddamn certain it's not the vaccines.
Pension? What's that? Have worked for 32+ years non-stop, never seen one of those before. Could just be this area, but "pensions" seem to be pretty rare and just for cushy government/government-ish jobs. The rest of us are stuck with "tax deferred savings plans" which few younger people ever start early enough and when they do it is too late to amass the necessary savings (AKA 401/457).
No conspiracy necessary when interests converge.
You see, I have this plan. It's exquisitely clever and diabolical. I hesitate to mention it because then everybody will want to do it, so don't tell anyone.
Sshh, here it is: I PLAN TO LIVE FOREVER ! And the best part is: SO FAR IT'S WORKING !
...omphaloskepsis often...
The europeans who usually make such comments here.
I have trouble understanding why anyone would think that a liability with no fixed end, guaranteeing a payout, like a pension or Social Security, would be a good idea. IRA's and 401k's make way, way, way, more financial sense that a pension does. There are countless stories of pension funds running dry, economic conditions changing during the 30+ years of someone drawing on a pension, Social Security getting raided by incompetent politicians, and other reasons that any kind of fixed benefit plan doesn't seem appealing to me. Or anything I should place any faith in.
I would much prefer to decide how much to invest each year, and how to invest it, myself. Then I only have myself to blame if (when?) something goes wrong.
Since the downward life expectancy trend is led by white American males, it's the best case for corporate retirement plans when looking at the demographics of the retirees. Let the conspiracy theories soar!
pissing and crapping all over myself every day just like all the 90 year olds I know. Even the active and healthy ones. I also can't wait to see giant birds and submarine men in their laundry every morning at 4am. Waking up screaming sounds so much fun. People think that the internet is paranoid, they got nothing on my friends aunt and she's Norwegian. All hail octogenarians.
If everyone wanted to be a financial advisor then they would already be employed as a financial advisor. I would rather not spend time on it or accept the risk for it because I simply don't enjoy it.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Did U Know?
Life expectancy is higher for liberals than conservatives? And life expectancy is going down for Red State voters and up for Blue State voters. So it'll all work out for the best.
http://www.medicaldaily.com/li...
You are welcome on my lawn.
and I'm a reasonable scientific guy so I'm all about evidence. But just because something is doesn't mean it should be; nor does it mean we can't change it.
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Cause more wars oversea, send young people to wars & die; will save lots $ in pension.
And no one's 401K or IRA ever ran dry before they died...
And if your's did dry up, you'd have only yourself or the thieving financial engineers on Wall Street, who spend their careers figuring out legal ways to steal everyone's money, to blame.
People have figured out that actively managed funds are a rip off, so now they pour money into index funds. The more money that goes into them, the more tempting a target they become. Some clever person at Goldman Sachs is going to figure out how to manipulate those funds to their benefit. It's coming. You'll see.
Its gonna be great, right? THats what the Doughnald meant.. We are all inventory, and the more turns the better!
Time for a new Political party in the US (or two!) One is off the rails Other cant pony up a leader.
Ok.. the food doesn't help, but, Modern business logic is centered around maximizing benefit and minimizing expense. This ends up soaking up workers' life by pushing salaried workers like dogs and getting excited when fewer people do more work ad nauseum. Reality is that the logic does not scale... so that more work is provided but at slipping quality. Has anyone ever felt that they could do a 50% better job, given 10% more time? Mind you efficiency is never spoken, but it is how one survives. who would have more fun (as in going out and doing things) if we didn't get burned out at work so often?
Time for a new Political party in the US (or two!) One is off the rails Other cant pony up a leader.
I would much prefer to decide how much to invest each year, and how to invest it, myself. Then I only have myself to blame if (when?) something goes wrong.
Because you are privileged to be intelligent, well educated, with adequate resources. If everyone was in that boat, it would be awesome. But not a lot of people are. We don't teach financial literacy in school. People get injured on the job, or get sick or injured without adequate health insurance. Boom, their entire ability to do what you're describing is gone. What then?
Part of the point of social security and disability is to ensure that these people don't end up dying in the street. Don't just skip from one ER to another running up huge costs. It's crazy, but paying for someone to have an apartment tends to cost less than them being homeless. Why? Because our emergency services are really expensive, because they are high-stress, require unique skills, and need to be available 24/7. Stick a homeless person in a house and have a councilor come over at 1pm every day, and they no longer tie up a couple of cops every few days. They don't end up needing an ambulance to come to a sketchy alley with police backup.
I get that social security seems like a really expensive thing, but homeless old people are way, way more expensive to deal with. Maybe you're in favor of just letting them die, but most of us realize that that's not a really good solution for many reasons. If we can't do that, then the next least expensive thing should be done. That's social security. (Well, social security and universal healthcare, but we're not quite there yet.)
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
At least you're slowly getting the message. Your next wars you can start yourself (drag in your wives and children instead of Europe), and the next overpriced "safe" product you can use yourself (same as above).
Beef up your skills and resume, then demand that. I did, and it's been amazing. The last few jobs I've laid out that I'm not going to do 60 hrs. I've explained that I do quality over quantity, and if they want assembly line work, I'm not their guy. I'm here to do the stuff that not many people can do. I'm here to fix big problems, design very complicated systems, and document how we can do things more efficiently. I'm doing that from 8:30-4:30 with a short break for lunch. I'm going to come in late some days, and I'm going to blow off work early some days.
What's the catch? I'm working a fair bit below my paygrade. The benefits are awesome, the work is interesting, and I've negotiated a really nice place for myself. I come in refreshed, tackle some real challenges, and then peace out. I have a co-worker who is a 60+ hr per week person. Their work is shit. They recognize it, but that's how they roll. We tend to team up where I take that lump of coal and chip it into a diamond before lunch. It would take me much longer to do it at all, even if I had the knowledge. So we get along great - they recognize that they are the quantity person, and I'm the quality person. The diamond miner and the jeweler. Neither can exist without the other. And I know which one I'd rather be.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
Because men are single, or become single. The death rate for us single men after the SJW's pull your wife into their cult on Facbook and convince them that they're not "empowered" and they take off to "follow their dream" for which they never did any of the *work* and leave us scrambling for our income, our children, and the home we invested the last 20 years in is killing us within a year after the breakup.
Think I'm kidding? http://www.cbsnews.com/news/men-wear-divorce-badly/
Found the racist.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Is it though? Is it really the Europeans? or do you have no idea and just assume it is? I know most of Europe has plenty of
There is a pretty long list of countries who's populous generally doesn't like America(ns). in fact i can't really think of any countries that do actually like America(ns). Sure lots of foreign politicians and diplomats will suck your cocks, but countries where THE PEOPLE actually like or respect america..nope not one.
I figure about the time the peak of the boomers are retiring, they'll figure out how to deplete our 401k's.
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
Who cares? They exist because we say so and euroweenies like to put on a lot of show bragging about being a "superpower", then they stab themselves in the gut and enact sanctions against Russia which are proving lethal to their own economy, because the US ordered them to. Suck it up, euroweenies.
thats what corporates want anyway.
Truth isn't racist.
Defined benefit plans are wholly unsustainable anyway. They're pyramid schemes.. outright criminal fraud. The false promises of pensions are meant only to entice and defraud the working poor.
Less spent on pensions means that frees up funds that can be spent to improve employee salary, so they can enjoy it while they've still got it, right?
[Ha hahahaaha]
Gotta love the bigotry coming from people living in those supposedly 'tolerant' and 'progressive' nations.
Do you work at Google?
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
This death rate increase is a statistical blip caused by the fad for opioid usage. As soon as the hopeless, worthless addict population has been self-cleared, life for the rest of us will be back to normal.
A rising death rate benefits all pension systems, including Social Security, in the early days of which the right imagined all kinds of conspiracy schemes that had the gummint secretly shortening our lifespans. At the same time, life insurance companies are threatened by a rising death rate. This is why life companies sell annuities as well as life insurance, as a hedge against changes in life expectancy.
Here in Israel we used to worship them as patrons in the 90s, we even used to sell american flags in our independence day.
Avantgarde Hebrew science fiction
Any responsible company fully funds the pensions of its workers, and those pensions are managed by an independent entity.
If you have a company that is filling the pension fund with its own stock, or just writing IOUs (which comes to the same thing), then the company doesn't actually have a pension plan, it has a lottery fund. The chances of the company still being around, in the same form, to pay out pensions in 10 or 20 or 30 years is basically zero. If the company hasn't gone under, it will have been bought or merged or divested or whatever - and the pension fund will "accidentally" fall through some legal loophole.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
-1 Overrated...
The moderator is a chickenshit fag. Explain yourself!
I see a lot of talk about the benefits to corporations, a little about possible causes of the drop in life expectancy in the US.
But the latter is all about minor stuff. I haven't seen a single mention of the elephant in the room: Obamacare and its effect on the healthcare and finances of the older part of the popuation.
Obamacare drastically increased the cost of, and reduced access to, medical care for oldsters. In the case of my wife, for example:
- The premiums nearly QUADRUPLED. (Currently over $14,500 per year, just for her.) QUADRUPLED. (Currently over $14,500 per year, just for her.)
- The deductables increased.
- She had to change specialists (for several life-threatening conditions) twice (so far). Some went out of practice, others weren't on the limited plans available to her.
- During the hunt for competent replacements (and bringing them up to speed on her conditions) here treatments were thrashed: Substitution of inferior medication, interruption of medication for months, complete abandonment of any treatment for one condition, etc.
- The price of medical devices and treatments climbed.
and so on.
Her situation is not unique.
This is not surprising: Obamacare is (admittedly) based on the "Complete Lives System", which directs healthcare resources away from those under 15 (and especially under 6 months) and over 40, and toward those between those ages.
This was predicted. And not just once Obamacare (or even Hillarycare in the Clinton administration) was proposed.
As far back as the early '80s, the impending doom of the Social Security System and other government retirement programs was a big issue. (When CNN was new I recall one interview with a high federal bureaucrat, who said "we have to get the death rate up to meet the birth rate" - a "slip of the tongue" that got edited out in the three-hours-later rebroadcast of the live show. B-b )
Opponents of government programs to interfere with, or take over, medical care have long pointed out that the government treats the citizens, not like people, but like a herd of domestic animals, living and dying for the benefit of their owners. Maximum benefit is obtained when the weaker newborn are killed off before they cost more than they will ever produce, and those getting too old to produce are killed off, saving the costs of feeding and maintaining them.
By those principles, now that their income taxes and productive output is dropping (or about to drop) and their load on retirement and health-care programs is rising, it's time to first loot the savings of, then kill off, those approaching or passing retirement age - starting with the boomers and genXers.
Whether this was the actual purpose of Obamacare, that is certainly much of its effect. And now we're starting to see it in the lifespan statistics.
Hang in there - it will keep getting worse.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
By "corporations" they mean "U.S. Federal Government" - with the amount of money they *won't* have to pay for Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, food stamps, etc.
A middle class high income family can be left destitute by one major illness. But hey, at least the corporations don't have to pay you as much for retirement. Genuinely glad I don't live there, nasty place. You sure as fuck have the right man in charge.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
If companies are saving billions now on my cohorts dying earlier, I want that pension back that was taken away from us because we were "living too long."
If it was irony, I'd cry, but its not.
I might not have a pension or SS when I retire. But I have Bitcoin!!!
It's pretty simple: drug overdose deaths are 2.5x what they were in 1999, and now kill more people (>50,000) annually than car accidents or suicides. This is mostly the result of easy availability of extremely potent opioids like Fentanyl.
Why this is more of a problem in the US, with perhaps the most aggressive anti-drug campaign of any country in the world, is a discussion for another day.
You have that backwards, SS was always designed to be paid from funds coming in, no funds will ever accrue to a pot of SS money.
This is to avoid the pension raiding that destroyed the private pension system.
Cheap storage VM.
I would rather not spend time on it or accept the risk for it because I have a conscience.
FTFY
Cheap storage VM.
Kill yourself for the good of the nation!
The Obamacare v. oldsters meme only holds until they hit 65 and can get on Medicare - the closest we have to universal health care. And, despite some fear-monger, not like Social Security wrt failing tax support. It does have some faults - for ne thing, unless you can afford Medicare Supplement insurance, the care provided is pretty minimal, but it does exist. And the prescription coverage was designed by politicians and insurance companies rather than somebody who wanted to get the prescriptions in the hands of people who actually need them (another place where having Supplement insurance helps. But for average oldsters Medicare works.
Or would you prefer the method used in stone-age tribes: old people who were not chiefs were just kicked out of the village to die.
Not anymore.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
No major corporation offers a true pension. They offer some retirement bennies but not true pensions. And the few that do offer Pensions will go bankrupt at some point and get out from under their pension obligations. (i.e. Airlines, Detroit).
This is capitalism at its finest: Good news, our retirered workers die early.
Trump has a few Goldman Sachs people in his cabinet. Maybe they get together, tell Trump we need something to move the markets big, because all the dopes will panic and sell at firesale prices. We'll sell for a few days, while the market is at all time highs, before the big Trump announcement, then Trump will threaten nuclear war causing the market to dive, then we'll make money on the transactions when people panic and sell, then we'll swoop in and buy again while everything is low, then there will suddenly be some progress in diplomacy with NK, the markets will decide they are oversold, and people will buy back in, and we'll make money on the transactions.
They wouldn't do anything like that would they?
It's the price of being the dominant superpower. There's lots of people who still have it in for the Brits, since we only took over from them in the 1940s.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Great post, mod up!
Particularly like that you not only did not slam people who work differently, but you found value in their habits.
Black Americans have been at the forefront of this patriotic effort to keep Social Security solvent (well, solvert-ish-er), by not living as long as average.
Nice to see Americans in general pitching in.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
Gross ? Never heard of it, and not much useful either. One common way life expectancy is calculated by actuaries is life expectancy at age x. Infant mortality (one common definition of infant is less than 5 years age for this purpose in my country) is expectancy at age 5 - i.e. someone who has survived 5 years, how much is he going to live on an average.
Infant mortality is therefore almost useless for pension actuaries because 5 year old is unlikely to be employed anywhere.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.