It feels like the author of this piece lists a variety of interesting observations, some useful facts, and then completely misses the boat. As a society we put

It feels like the author of this piece lists a variety of interesting observations, some useful facts, and then completely misses the boat. As a society we put effort into finding ways to help sick people that are not old because we can generally expect them to have a good number of productive years if they are cured. There's a good return value, and it feels just. This isn't the case with older folk. At a guess, if we found a magical way to cure heart disease and completely take it off the list there, most of those people will still die, a few months/years later, from something else (cancer maybe, or that very descriptive "other" block). Old age isn't just some single disease we can fix, its a general purpose failure of the body. If you can heal that in a cost effective way (or in any way, really), congrats, you're a trillionare, but I'd bet we'll see full-body cybernetics before we figure out a way to cure aging.