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Healthcare costs in the US shows no signs of dropping long-term. There's also no radical developments which change or automate prescribed or preventative care,

Healthcare costs in the US shows no signs of dropping long-term. There's also no radical developments which change or automate prescribed or preventative care, with some illnesses resulting in very expensive hospital stays. Healthcare salaries are also not expected to drop long-term, and will probably increase. Cancer rates also go up as you age, resulting in chemotherapy and other expensive forms of healthcare and tests. Insurance also fights to avoid paying out, and they're probably not keen to stop doing this, either. You generally become more expensive to insure as you age. Healthcare law is also subject to intense debates within the US, and every change of administration brings risk of those laws changing. Costs of developing drugs and procedures is also probably not going to go down either, resulting in pharma companies having to charge more per pill to recoup their costs (even if you ignore price gouging from Wall Street investors and free handouts to poor people). And in the background, you have chronic illness costs (diabetes) and insurance premiums which always add up the longer you live. As well as environmental regulation and disasters which may expose you to harmful stuff.

reasonattlm 9y ago
No radical developments? Near all medical expense is at present due to age-related disease. When the distinct and understood causes of aging can be treated as medical conditions, which at present they are not, then that expense will be reduced. Rejuvenation biotechnology to repair the causes of aging is a going concern. The first legitimate, actual, real rejuvenation therapies that turn back one of the root causes of aging are in early human trials and preclinical development. They are largely low-cost. Efforts to slow aging by slowing those causes are a larger going concern. Those approaches are similarly largely low-cost. It is clearly the case that a tipping point has been reached in support for efforts to treat aging in order to, eventually, indefinitely postpone the mortality, cost, and suffering of old age. Just ahead, in the next few years, there is the start of a massive shift in medicine for the old, medicine associated with the greatest costs. It is beginning now.
- aaavl2821 9y ago
  Have any well designed human studies shown a particular intervention is associated with a significant increase in lifespan? Call me skeptical, but we can't even treat Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, and the leading cause of death in the US is still cardiovascular disease after decades of drug development Plus, unless these drugs enable immortality I'd imagine they would just enable more people to live to older age, and then more people would get high cost illnesses

reasonattlm 9y ago

No radical developments? Near all medical expense is at present due to age-related disease. When the distinct and understood causes of aging can be treated as medical conditions, which at present they are not, then that expense will be reduced. Rejuvenation biotechnology to repair the causes of aging is a going concern. The first legitimate, actual, real rejuvenation therapies that turn back one of the root causes of aging are in early human trials and preclinical development. They are largely low-cost. Efforts to slow aging by slowing those causes are a larger going concern. Those approaches are similarly largely low-cost. It is clearly the case that a tipping point has been reached in support for efforts to treat aging in order to, eventually, indefinitely postpone the mortality, cost, and suffering of old age. Just ahead, in the next few years, there is the start of a massive shift in medicine for the old, medicine associated with the greatest costs. It is beginning now.

aaavl2821 9y ago
Have any well designed human studies shown a particular intervention is associated with a significant increase in lifespan? Call me skeptical, but we can't even treat Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, and the leading cause of death in the US is still cardiovascular disease after decades of drug development Plus, unless these drugs enable immortality I'd imagine they would just enable more people to live to older age, and then more people would get high cost illnesses