Not necessarily true. We could take measures to improve the overall health of everyone (which would almost certainly impose somewhat on freedom) leading to a general reduction in HC costs. And, of course, cutting HC expenditures by half would probably mean putting the screws to pharma, whose main goals seem to involve finding profitable pharmacological solutions for every ailment. But most importantly, increasing lifespan, which is an average, could well lead to a general reduction in heroic EoL care that looks a lot like wasted money.
I think the picture is not as mathematically simple as you suggest.
Here is a possibly interesting approach. When considering this, pick an age and exclude the contributions of disease etc. above this age. For instance, if a certain type of heart disease struck only people over 80, reducing it is not going to do a lot to increase life expectancy. More realistically, one might argue that suicide at a young age is a significant issue which should be reduced, while suicide of those over 80 might be a rational response to a decreasing quality of life.
So the question could be what expenditures at a younger age could reduce deaths at a young age or delay the onset of illness at a greater age. Increasing life span does not have to increase costs if we use the one-hoss shay model - we all are perfectly healthy until some advance year, and then collapse rapidly and inexpensively.
For example, we can treat obesity which should reduce the incidence of diabetes, and that might save a lot of money.
Certainly doctors yelling at people to improve their life styles might help. But I wonder if some means of providing better quality food might be cheaper and more effective. Of course attempts to do this for school lunches seem to piss off conservatives for some reason.
Consistent with my last post, I reiterate that firearm deaths have nothing to do with public health or average lifespan. Although 89% of homicide victims are 49 or younger, and 66% of cardiovascular disease deaths occur in those over the age of 75, clearly it is impossible that there is any relationship between those statistics and the OP’s goal of having the average lifespan grow by two years.
Not necessarily true. It depends on how universal coverage is implemented. Most systems of universal coverage also have a community-based rating system meaning that everyone pays the same and everyone gets the same services for medically necessary health care. Such a system no longer requires huge numbers of different policies with different features and different costs and bizarre configurations of co-pays and deductibles, and it no longer requires you to pay for the privilege of having insurance bureaucrats try to screw you out of coverage by scrutinizing each and every claim; instead, it provides a rational systematic mechanism for cost control by negotiating a common fee schedule to go along with the common services.
This is a foundationally significant difference and its impact would be immense, and that’s why universal HC systems in other countries, after adjusting for other differences, cost about 30-40% less per capita than the present US system while offering universal access and, often, better individual outcomes including longer life expectancies.
The “problem” with single-payer is that it simply cannot be implemented except as public program. Once the system is in place, it is expected that the carrier will start to look at causes and move toward things like banning (or, arrgh, taxing) 64oz beverages and ultra-bacon-burgers. They might even look at ways to encourage people to use bicycles instead of cars for short trips, and maybe make cable more expensive in order to get bodies off couches. This is a terrifying prospect for freedom-loving Americans, we much prefer that our bad habits do not cost anything extra until the side-effects actually manifest.
Stop all research into medical technologies and procedures. Freeze our healthcare in its current state and wait for costs to go down over time. In 10 years, we could probably halve our expenditures.
But, of course, we want new surgeries, new procedures, new medicine, new technology, and all this stuff costs a lot of money when it is first introduced into the system.
So we have to accept that medical advancement necessarily comes at increased cost.
The other option is to ration care to old people, which would save a ton of money. Nobody seems to favor that option so I think we’re stuck where we are.
So it’s your belief that health care innovations and advancement come from insurance companies? Really? That’s what you believe?
No, health care innovations come from medical research, much of it publicly funded. But thanks for giving me the opportunity to articulate the central problem with US health care in one sentence:
Health insurance companies, fundamentally, are completely useless. They perform no health care, they add absolutely no value to the health care system, yet directly and indirectly they are responsible for at least one-third of its total costs. The countries with the most effective health care systems are the ones that either tightly regulate health insurers under a framework of uniform rates and services, or, preferably, regulate them entirely out of existence.
I have to disagree about this. Medical professionals routinely bill for procedures that are not necessary and are merely a way to fatten the coffers. Under the current system of bill for service, there needs to be an economic driver for efficiency, that keeps healthcare workers working efficiently on what is needed, an not on what is not needed. And increasingly, insurance companies are requiring tougher and more elaborate paperwork filled out by doctors, which takes them away from the actual practice of medicine and into a world where they’re trying to figure out the most efficient way of filling out these forms in order to game the system. Doctors’ roles are now basically to act as insurance money combines, spreading their arms as far and wide as possible, billing for any and all procedures remotely related to the symptoms described and double billing to as many insurance companies as possible.
No my friend, insurance companies are not even close to being in the top 10 problems faced by our health system. The status quo benefits doctors in an inordinate proportion by far, so it is no wonder that they would fight to keep it this way. The true drivers of cost are all related to the supply-side of this economic equation. Doctors are awarded degrees by an oligarchic cadre of universities with a fixed total number of graduates, for decades now, which has caused salaries to skyrocket, while neglecting the overall needs of society. Further, Medicare reimbursement rates act as a thermostat of marketplace prices overall, and again doctors negotiate reimbursement rates every year withy the government and have thus far come out ahead pretty well. The reason mainly being that when people sit down to establish a fair price compensation for a certain procedure, they calculate x time dedicated to perform this. In reality, doctors dedicate x/3 time of what is officially estimated, so they get to bill more patients, and patients barely get the service they paid for. In the end this is the only way that doctors can sustain their $500000 yearly income.