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Basically everything that actually gives us longevity now was invented by 1950. Clean water, electricity, antibiotics, and vaccines. There have been some significant developments in childbirth, but obviously that part alone is not the cost driver. It is end of life care, subsidies to hypochondriacs and the poor, and maintenance treatments like lifelong blood pressure meds and dialysis.
This is so unbelievably wrong I don't even know where to begin
The sheer amount of surgical techniques, mechanical/robot assistance, and drug development alone. Not to mention computerization and millions of other improvements neither of us know about too.
How can you be so blatantly and confidently wrong?
The stats on this are eye watering though
But those are all still interventions that most people under 50 aren’t going to need. So people are still going to feel ripped off because they can’t see where the money is going.
It's thanks to said medical advances that most people can be confident of living well past 50, into their 60s, 70s or even 80s.
Focusing on the first fifty years of life where the need for intensive medical care isn't nearly as necessary is myopic.
US life expectancy at birth was already over 68 years in 1950.
Hence why I specified the 70s and 80s.
68 is awful in comparison, North Korea beats that today.
The same source (statista) gives 78 today. So no 80s. Though I don't know how accurate these tables are; they're by nature projections.
Taking those figures at face value, 50% of people die by the age of 78 (that's what life expectancy is, after all). I don't have actuarial tables at hand, but that also implies that a significant fraction of the survivors then go on to make it to their 80s. Women also live longer on average.
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