For a few weeks this spring a Hollywood feature film called Twilight has been running in multiplexes across the country. It stars two ageing film icons - Paul Newman and Gene Hackman - as a private eye and his wealthy boss locked in a final Chandleresque caper before their lights go out for the very last time.

The flinty skills and gravitas of the leading men earned warm reviews. But Twilight bombed at the box office. Such weighty themes as man's mortal span and diminishing powers are usually taboo to an industry geared to teenagers.

For a pragmatic people many Americans prefer to look the other way, when it comes to old age. Of course, Florida is an exception. Earlier this month I stopped in an Atlantic coast resort called Vera Beach and went for dinner.

The first four restaurants I tried were not only full but overflowing with old folk dressed to kill, eating as if there were no tomorrow. They radiated the message that life couldn't be better.

For half a century Florida has polished its own image as America's retirement Mecca but now, in the state capital, Tallahassee, there is a realisation that the golden goose of yesterday is turning into a financial albatross which could sink Florida's budget.

The problem is simple. People are living longer. Many survive way beyond their savings, and nest eggs have run out. So they become dependant on the government, State and Federal. Every decade here life expectancy grows another three years.

In Florida there are now 900,000 men and women over the age of 75 with valid driving licences. That has led to a row over whether they should be tested every six months, to make sure they can still see a decent distance beyond the end of their Cadillacs.

The attorney general's office isn't rushing into action fearing such a move might be unconstitutional - apart from the uproar it would unleash.

In Tallahassee there is America's only Prime Minister of Ageing, Bentley Lipscomb, the Secretary for Elderly Affairs, who says society has failed to notice the profound advance in the human life span. "Not long ago 65 was thought to be old," he says, "but now it's advanced to 80 plus."

In Florida, the devil is certainly in the detail. The number of 85-year-olds is growing at three times the rate of the rest of the population. Whole cities of retirees are going to reach that age, and more, together.

But as people survive longer so many fall victim to diseases like Parkinson's which require institutional care.

Now Florida is at the crossroads. The aim is to cut the cost of healthcare programmes for the old while persuading them the future will be with what's called 'managed care' - that means paying premiums to an insurance company which will ration treatment and doctors. And even more unpopular, there won't be easy admittance to nursing homes.

Already some health companies eager to deliver profits on Wall Street are evicting poor patients from nursing homes to free up beds for the elderly rich who can afford expensive treatment.

"It's shocking and there's no real safeguard", said one 75 year old widow. She was one of the hundreds of patrons in the Rascal House, a diner on Miami Beach.

In the car park an electric golf cart is used to transport the more infirm drivers from their large limos to the diner's front door. Though the collective age in the Rascal House is about 30,000 years it's packed every lunchtime with sprightly pensioners determined to look after themselves.

"Don't be fooled by Florida," said one exile from the chilly Mid-West. "This isn't paradise. A lot of people move down here and cut themselves off from their families back home. Then they get lonely. They start running out of money and switch to cheap health insurance. Then they die.