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"So we know that people are living longer and longer. We also know that yearly health care costs are rising. We also seem to think we can keep the latter in con
by apsec112 17y ago
"So we know that people are living longer and longer. We also know that yearly health care costs are rising. We also seem to think we can keep the latter in control while continuing with the former."
This is a lie spread by the medical guild to convince you to give them more money. In face, the increase in life expectancy has leveled off during the past thirty years (citation: http://daveeriqat.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/us_life_expectancy.png http://daveeriqat.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/us_life_expect...), the time period during which medical costs have risen so much. All of the extra trillions we've spent on medicine have done very little.
"The fact is that older people incur much larger healthcare costs over their lifetimes [1]."
This is, in large part, because older people have less energy, and are therefore easier to bully into handing all their money over to the medical guild.
"We may get to a point where we have to make the hard decision of how long we want to wait until we retire and how long we really want to live after we retire."
This is, again, BS spread by the medical industry to inflate prices. The US spends twice as much on healthcare as any other country, yet ranks 42nd in life expectancy (citation: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,293008,00.html http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,293008,00.html, from Fox News, no less). The obscene amounts of money are not working.
- nradov 17y agoThere are several reasons why US healthcare costs are higher than other countries, and there is certainly a lot of inefficiency that should be fixed. But one of the major reasons is that the US effectively subsidizes drug development for the rest of the world. US buyers generally have to pay full market rate, and then in other countries prices are fixed artificially low by government fiat. The US probably can't continue paying that subsidy forever, so eventually either other countries will have to pay more, or the US will also start fixing prices and thus research funds will dry up.
- blasdel 17y agoWe're subsidizing marketing campaigns by paying market rates, not pharmaceutical development.
- tokenadult 17y agothe increase in life expectancy has leveled off during the past thirty years Untrue in most countries. I have already posted the journal articles in this thread before you posted, but here they are again. http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2809%2961460-4/abstract http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-67... http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v464/n7288/pdf/nature08984.pdf http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v464/n7288/pdf/nature08... Professional demographers usually don't publish on WordPress blogs, and it looks like too few WordPress bloggers read scientific literature carefully.