The highly expensive care (that is only available in developed countries) only adds a few months, in general. That's why the health cost graphs of most people s

The highly expensive care (that is only available in developed countries) only adds a few months, in general. That's why the health cost graphs of most people show a spike in the last year of life. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be provided. That's a really tough call to make. I am saying that it won't have a huge impact on life expectancy. All that said, people in developing countries "just deal" with a lot of seriously unpleasant (and economically costly) health problems that we'd fix in the U.S. So there are quality-of-life benefits that don't show up in the raw numbers. Finally, a 50% reduction in across-the-board death rates only buys eight years in life expectancy, because per-year death rates go up exponentially. Another way to look at this is that "only" one year in life expectancy difference actually represents being 9% better at keeping people alive. For example, life expectancy of people who didn't die violently and survived the first 2 years was about 50 in ancient times. (Including those factors, it was 20-25.) Now it's about 80. That may not seem like a world-changing increase compared to the other improvements, but it actually means that we're 12-16 times better at keeping people alive.