
Americans Are Dying Younger, Saving Corporations Billions - mcone
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-08/americans-are-dying-younger-saving-corporations-billions
======
buserror
I've been saying that for years. Here in europe, the reason the life
expectancy is high is that it's based on people who die today at ripe old age,
many of them having been retired 30 years, sometimes more... They are 85+, and
they drag the mean age of death thru the roof.

When THAT lucky generation is gone, I think statisticians will realise that
their children are /nowhere/ near as lucky, and I'm pretty sure the life
expectancy number will fall off a cliff.

I don't have anything to back it up mind you, but raising the age of
retirement, more stress related to job stability, whatever, you name it; it's
just empirical but I've seen a lot of people in my environment die in their
60's -- many of them who had a perfectly 'sane' way of life. I know what you
are thinking, many more people will die at 60 then will die at 90, but I'm
still pretty sure there's some underlying pattern here.

Also, I do have a vague impression that making access to the NHS more
difficult PLUS raising age of retirement EQUAL MOAR PROFITS for someone,
somewhere.

~~~
georgeecollins
Are you sure retiring early leads to a long life expectancy? I would expect
the opposite. My father still works and he is very healthy for an 88 year old.
Anecdote is not data, but people in my family seem to stay healthy by working
or staying very active.

I think part of the point is to find a avocation that is not stressful, you
enjoy, and can do a long time. That may be worth more than money.

~~~
kartan
> My father still works and he is very healthy for an 88 year old.

This is usually related to the kind of job you are doing.

My mother was cleaning schools and that is a killer for the back. Being
retired, she takes long walks and keeps herself active and healthy.

But when I was studying I saw quite old teachers still active, and happy. But
that's a different kind of job with different effects on your health.

> I think part of the point is to find a [a]vocation that is not stressful,
> you enjoy, and can do a long time.

I agree. If you are lucky enough to get a job that fulfills you, then
continuing working can be a good thing. That's why we can't just delay
retirement age, but we need to take into account personal circumstances.

A not stressful and enjoyable work also helps you to keep your good health for
longer, so you get in better shape to old age.

~~~
pm90
Great point. I wonder, if everyone should, in their middle ages, really think
this through. And perhaps make a career change if their work requires
something they wouldn't be comfortable doing later in life.

One of the best professions I can think of retiring in is probably academia...
I've worked/studied/socialized with professors very much older than me, and
they seem to continue to enjoy teaching/talking to students despite their age.

~~~
eksemplar
I sometimes wonder if a lot of the freshly educated programmers I hire really
know what they are in for.

In 25 years they'll still have 25-30 years of work left in their lives, and by
then most of them won't have received any significant reschooling, and they
will still be competing in a tech world, where 10 years ago there wasn't a
thing called smartphones.

Some of them will do just fine. I know a lot of old programmers, but I also
know a lot of former older IT employees who are spending their 60ies in the
unemployment lines.

~~~
aianus
> In 25 years they'll still have 25-30 years of work left in their lives

If you don't care about having a wife or kids you can easily retire forever
after 10-15 years of work in SV or NYC.

~~~
gozur88
You can't, really. Not in the US. There's no way you can budget health care
for that many years.

~~~
the_gastropod
Yes you can.

1\. mrmoneymustache.com 2\. earlyretirementextreme.com 3\. gocurrycracker.com
4\. madfientist.com 5\. thepowerofthrift.com (I could go on for a while here)

It's not only perfectly possible, it's not particularly difficult.

~~~
gozur88
No, that doesn't address the problem at all. If you retire thirty years before
you qualify for medicare, you have no idea what your medical expenses will be.
None. They could amount to millions of dollars over those three decades,
depending on your particular issues, and you're never going to close that gap
by minimizing expenses.

~~~
the_gastropod
It does. Just because _you_ aren't comfortable with that risk doesn't mean
it's impossible. It just means your risk tolerance is lower than the
aforementioned people who did retire 30 years early.

~~~
gozur88
Well, if you're willing to be homeless you can retire any time you'd like.

------
Mahn
I have this theory that in a couple decades or three most of the developed
world will enter a health crisis, as everyone will suddenly realize that we've
been eating and drinking like shit for a long time. Almost 3/4 of what you can
find in your average grocery store today has unnecessary amounts of sugar,
salt and/or chemicals added and no one seems to care. Someday we'll look at
the food we eat now like the way we see tobacco today.

~~~
wmccullough
>and no one seems to care

I'd have to disagree with that. There are lots of people who care and have
tried to be good stewards to the public. The problem is that you also have
corporations with major amounts of cash and influence that actively discredit
anyone who speaks out. These are facts.

For example, whether or not GMO issues are horseshit or not doesn't matter
when anyone who speaks out is given a gag order or when we find leaked
documents showing that companies know of damage and our systems are so fucked
we aren't even allowed to ask about it without getting sued into oblivion.

People care, but caring isn't enough anymore.

~~~
18nleung
Could you elaborate? I myself haven't seen much compelling evidence against
GMOs.

~~~
coldtea
Aren't those that are making extraordinary claims supposed to bring the
evidence?

The idea that, given these premises:

a) we who don't understand even 10% of how the ecological ecosystem works

b) we don't understand even 10% of genes and how they interplay

c) we don't understand even 10% of second order effects of such changes

d) we don't yet have explanation for tons of interactions and functionality in
the body (from what triggers cancers to all kinds of lesser stuff)

e) we can't even have a decent dietary advice from medical bodies that is not
revised completely every 10-20 years

f) corporations will even put plutonium to kids milk if there's profit in it
(and then lie about it)

g) all kinds of industry-sponsored research has been shown to be paid lies

... GMOs are perfectly safe.

It's more like changing various bits in working computer memory, with a ho-hum
printout of parts of the program's in-memory structure and a crappy flow-chart
of what it does, and wishing that the running program (and OS and such) will
continue to play just fine...

~~~
bluGill
Given the above, why do you think anything is safe? Common grapefruit was
created by putting a radiation source in an orchard and seeing what happened -
most of it was bad (as in trees died), but one grapefruit turns out to taste
good. That grapefruit was grafted again and again until it is dominate. We
have no idea which genes were changed and never did any study to see if the
mutations were safe, we just eat it.

For hundreds of years farmers have been saving seeds from the plants that
produced better. As a result the random mutations that farmers like have been
selected for with no study on if those are safe mutations.

By Contrast with GMO we know which gene we change and why, and have done
studies to prove safety. Maybe biases studies, and maybe not enough of them,
but we have done them. That is more than you can say about anything not GMO.

~~~
BuckRogers
This. We've been creating GMOs since the dawn of agriculture. Doing it in a
petrie dish changes nothing. I'm less concerned about GMOs than I am about
them changing them to spray worse and worse weedkiller on them before I eat
it.

~~~
coldtea
> _We 've been creating GMOs since the dawn of agriculture. Doing it in a
> petrie dish changes nothing._

Yeah, if breadth and scale doesn't mean anything.

It's like saying: "We have been blowing things up since the advent of
gunpowder by the Chinese a millennium ago. Doing it with atomic bombs changes
nothing".

Traditional "GMOs" were already closely related, and the modifications that
could emerge were very constrained. Not so much with GMOs that allow for
arbitrary outputs.

~~~
bluGill
The breadth and scale is much smaller with GMO and random chance. A farmer
several thousand years ago is responsible for as much genetic mutation of the
human race as all the genetic manipulation that has made it to market. (though
this will change quickly if we start making approval for GMO easy)

------
gthtjtkt
Reminds me of this article from The Atlantic last year:

> For the last several months, social scientists have been debating the
> striking findings of a study by the economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton.
> Between 1998 and 2013, Case and Deaton argue, white Americans across
> multiple age groups experienced large spikes in suicide and fatalities
> related to alcohol and drug abuse—spikes that were so large that, for whites
> aged 45 to 54, they overwhelmed the dependable modern trend of steadily
> improving life expectancy. While critics have challenged the magnitude and
> timing of the rise in middle-age deaths (particularly for men), they and the
> study’s authors alike seem to agree on some basic points: Problems of mental
> health and addiction have taken a terrible toll on whites in America—though
> seemingly not in other wealthy nations—and the least educated among them
> have fared the worst.

[https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/01/white-w...](https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/01/white-
working-class-poverty/424341/)

------
bmc7505
But wait, there's good news: If you don't die quickly enough, they'll help!

Taking too long to die: Some 'terminal' patients can lose hospice benefits:
[http://www.news-press.com/story/news/2017/07/28/too-long-
die...](http://www.news-press.com/story/news/2017/07/28/too-long-die-some-
terminal-patients-lose-medicare-hospice-benefits/435340001/)

~~~
yardie
Yes, it makes sense. Hospice is for end of life care. They literally pump you
full of pain medication as it is more humane than dying in agony. If your
condition is not continually getting worse while under hospice and there is a
chance you are getting better than you should be under a different treatment.

Hospice is not healthcare it is where you go to die.

------
sddfd
The absurdity is that life insurance/pension companies assume live expectancy
is actually rising.

The company providing my pension fund estimates my life expectancy to 114
years - a fantasy number, albeit one that /increases/ my monthly payment and
/decreases/ my expected pension.

~~~
lr4444lr
Another reason why term coverage, not whole life/universal, is a better
choice.

------
twoquestions
Now I'm imagining our economy like some cruel volcano god, demanding blood in
exchange for temporary safety. "People's lives are getting worse, look how
much money that's making us!"

It's as if people exist only to make money, actually making people's lives
better be damned. I doubt people will tolerate such a vampiric system for much
longer, especially if it doesn't feel the need to conceal it's fangs anymore,
and what comes afterward keeps me up at night.

~~~
jrimbault
Yesterday I heard on the tv or radio I heard the metric "€/vote" as if a vote
was product.

~~~
jorvi
I read on another HN thread that the top 25% pays 90% of taxes. Made me grok
why governments will never really care about the poor pretty clearly.

It's harsh, but for cities or even countries the bottom xx% is a net drain.

~~~
BatFastard
But the bottom 90% do the labor that earns that top 1% all the money.

~~~
madengr
But the top 1% provide the jobs. Unless the bottom 90% collectively strike, or
you "nationalize" everything (that works really well /s), what ya gonna do
about it?

~~~
BatFastard
Do they really "provide the jobs" the companies they own provide them. VERY
few of those people are critical to the companies they own.

~~~
madengr
I agree, at least once the company is well established, but they do own them.
If you nationalize them, or somehow make it so the company "serves the greater
good", rather than the interests of it's owners, the results are disasterous.
It's playing out in Venezuela now.

------
joosters
I don't get it. The article does _not_ say that life expectancies are
decreasing. It says that they are still increasing, just not as fast as they
were a few years ago. But the article (and most of the comments) seem to think
it means that people are dying younger. That's not what the data is saying.

~~~
albertgoeswoof
our media is a wonderful thing

------
albertgoeswoof
It's difficult to predict mortality rates. Advanced healthcare techniques
(e.g. CRISPR) could completely eradicate entire classes of diseases (kind of
like how anti-biotics and vaccinations changed healthcare completely), or they
could lead to nothing.

So we might find that the average age of death jumps up by 20+ years in the
next 50-60 years (just like it did after WW2).

Nuclear war aside we almost certainly won't see a drop in the average age.

~~~
nbates80
The problem is the cost of those techniques. Will it be low enough so that it
has an impact on the average (or even better, the median) life expectancy?

~~~
albertgoeswoof
Probably, vaccines were very expensive when first produced, as were anti-
biotics.

Given we are potentially entering the age of unlimited power (i.e. via
solar/battery tech), we should be able to grow ever more food. Combined with
global population growth declining we will see basic quality of life becoming
almost gauranteed universally. Then we'll have more and more people + AI
working on advancing tech (as they don't have to work on manual things) so
production costs should drop dramatically.

------
SamBoogieNYC
This headline is mindbogglingly dystopic and crass

~~~
baursak
The bright neoliberal future is here!

------
emodendroket
Good news, everyone.

~~~
Sleeep
Did you mean for me to read that in Professor Farnsworth's voice?

Because I did.

~~~
niuzeta
_Good news, everyone! people are dying earlier, and you 're one of them!_

Yep, definitely a Farnsworth quote.

------
maaaats
How does the pension system in USA work? Do the companies pay you a small
salary after you retire? It reads like that. In that case, what about the
place you worked until you were 40, are they still on the hook? What if the
company closes down?

~~~
cm2012
Very few companies offer pensions now - mostly the government.

~~~
chrisseaton
> Very few companies offer pensions now

All professional jobs offer pensions, I'm sure. Including all the major tech
companies.

~~~
AdmiralAsshat
Haha, nope.

You have the "opportunity" to contribute to a 401k, and if you use the
company's (poorly run) 401k option, they may decide to match _up to_ a
percentage of your contribution.

For instance, I contribute 10% of my paycheck towards the 401k, my employer
matches 4% of that. That's it. And I work in IT for a Fortune 500 company.

~~~
uw_rob
Just to make sure I am correct, your 401k gets matched with 0.004 of your
total pay? Thanks

~~~
kasey_junk
No. The way it usually works is you can contribute up to X% of your pay tax
advantaged (with a hard dollar cap) to your 401k. The company can match up to
Y% pay.

What he is suggesting is that he can contribute 10%. Everything he contributes
up to 4% is matched by his company (ie a 4% pay increase). Usually its a
little more complicated than that. Like they'll match 1:1 the first 2% and
then 1:2 the next 2% for a total of 3% matching funds.

~~~
maaaats
What are typical matches?

In Norway there are no matches. The company just have to pay 2-7% of your
salary to your fund each year. For tech jobs it's mostly at the top of the
range.

~~~
kasey_junk
Its fairly variant. As far as I can tell (and I'm no expert) the max is either
non-existent or so high that i've never encountered it in the wild. Between
2-5% seems common in my experience.

The companies do not _have_ to do this. It is purely optional, though there is
a tax advantage I believe. Most "professionals" have the option at their
company.

A bigger problem is that the 401k offerings are fairly bad usually. The people
picking them are HR staffers who frequently don't have experience in finance,
so the plans frequently have murderously high expense ratios. Even to the
point where some companies repackage Vanguard funds that you can get on the
open market for 10x less.

~~~
Sleeep
There is a maximum total contribution.

[https://www.irs.gov/retirement-plans/401k-plans-deferrals-
an...](https://www.irs.gov/retirement-plans/401k-plans-deferrals-and-matching-
when-compensation-exceeds-the-annual-limit)

total employee and employer contributions (including forfeitures) - the lesser
of 100% of an employee’s compensation or $54,000 for 2017 ($53,000 for 2015
and 2016 not including "catch-up" elective deferrals of $6,000 in 2015 - 2017
for employees age 50 or older) (IRC section 415(c))

So the max is basically 200% match of the individual's contribution, which is
maxed out at $18,000 for an individual under 50.

------
swah
I never understood why everyone is against smoking if it saves those corps
money in the long run.

~~~
fiblye
Slowly dying from cancer is expensive. Dying from a sudden stroke induced by a
lifetime of lethargy isn't.

~~~
darpa_escapee
I believe even smokers who die early from disease are cheaper in the long run
compared to those who end up dying much later in life.

I think the same idea holds true for the obese because they tend to die early,
as well.

Being old and sick is incredibly expensive. Living healthily enough to get to
be old and sick is a monetary drain from insurance companies' perspectives.

------
Chardok
Its not hard to see _why_ exactly Americans are dying younger. Hell, just look
at the headline here.

When you have increased wealth concentration flowing upwards and more
involvement of profit machines in people's lives (healthcare, correctional
facilities, food, environment), people on average are working harder for less
pay with increased cost of living. This means less recreational time to blow
stress off, less time for doctor visits (not to mention the fun games our
federal government is playing with healthcare), and less time/money/emphasis
to treat yourself spiritually/psychologically. I am hardly surprised this
equates to higher mortality rates.

America has a huge problem spending money on the betterment of its citizens,
and it is starting to show.

~~~
GhostVII
> Its not hard to see why exactly Americans are dying younger

American's aren't dying younger, life expectancies are still increasing... The
headline is a lie.

------
Shivetya
purely anecdotal, but when my Doctor tells me he cannot tell fat people to
diet because bad surveys affect the reviews of Doctors and their hospital;
surveys from both government and insurance companies; it should be a clear
indicator we are doing something wrong. He cannot connect their diabetes to
their weight, only suggest what foods would help manage their diabetes without
crossing the line into mentioning weight management.

what are people's actual expectations for how long they should or can live? I
am at the age where I am not seeing relatives who I grew up learning from
passing on, I am even having coworkers pass on. Perhaps I notice it more when
people younger than I go.

~~~
woobar
Interesting. I was never asked to do any reviews of my doctors or other
healthcare providers.

As for your second question, I semi-jokingly tell my kids that my
consciousness will be uploaded to the cloud and I will be posting dad jokes to
their twitter long after I am dead. Just need to make sure I pay for hosting
in advance.

------
mathattack
Looking at the chart, it seems like they're reading an awful lot into 1 or 2
data points. It's very noisy data.

------
trentnix
The list of municipal and state governments that are trending towards
bankruptcy due to underfunded pensions is longer than a rich kid's Christmas
list. A shortening life expectancy benefits them most.

That's the news here, if there is any.

------
jorblumesea
Personal opinion: Life expectancy gains will actually reverse over the new 20
years, given how little is being done to combat extremely poor health choices
many Americans make.

Then it will skyrocket due to medical innovations like CRISPR.

------
sharemywin
But our healthcare is the best in the world...at least I pay like it is...

~~~
richmarr
US healthcare is far lower value for money than other developed nations, at
least using average life expectancy as the metric:

[http://2oqz471sa19h3vbwa53m33yj.wpengine.netdna-
cdn.com/wp-c...](http://2oqz471sa19h3vbwa53m33yj.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-
content/uploads/2016/08/us-healthcare-system.jpg)

~~~
moduspol
Life expectancy is a terrible measure for quality of health care. The best
health care in the world won't change how much overeating and a sedentary
lifestyle contribute to heart disease (the #1 cause of death in the US),
stroke (#5), and diabetes (#7).

Life expectancy can vary dramatically by county, even when there are no
differences at all in health care policy. [1]

That's not to say we aren't paying too much and getting too little. We are.
It's just life expectancy isn't the way to measure it.

[1] [http://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/who-lives-
longer-s...](http://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/who-lives-longer-study-
finds-colorado-wins-20-years-n756471)

~~~
richmarr
> _Life expectancy is a terrible measure for quality of health care..._

Depends how you define health care. If you include preventative medicine,
education, etc. then things look a bit different.

Note sure what happens in the US, but countries that practice what you might
call "socialized medicine" do a lot of that.

~~~
moduspol
Far and away, lifestyle is the biggest contributor. The very source I linked
above claims it accounts for 74% of differences, and "access to health care
accounted for much of the rest of the difference, the team found."

I'm open to contrary claims, but if you're making one at all it's a pretty
loose one.

~~~
richmarr
You seem to have missed my point, and keep focusing on overly narrow health
intervention. Going back to my previous comment, education (through direct
communication and through schools) is a channel through which lifestyle and
hence health outcomes can be improved. Similarly, the UK we have a forthcoming
sugar tax, as do many other countries. Cycle infrastructure. etc.

------
mack1001
Sure, also understand that the productive segment is also be affected in turn
impacting future GDP calculations. It's a net loss in the long run..

~~~
MacsHeadroom
Are you sure about that? Don't most people stop being productive long before
they die?

~~~
mack1001
The article states that there are higher deaths of despair which affects
younger population disproportionately. This impacts productivity and GDP
calculations.

------
justforFranz
Always nice to see a perverse incentive. But thankfully, in America we work
for corporations, not the other way around.

~~~
ionised
I'm trying to understand what this comment means.

------
miheermunjal
wonder how the influx of "corporate wellness" plans affect this. It seems more
and more that your lifestyle can be adjusted/improved via your workplace
rather than personal drive.

Could that be an input into insurance? potentially...

------
diyseguy
cue sardonic grin

([https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/in-brief-
aug-09/](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/in-brief-aug-09/))

------
holtalanm
This kind of reads a little like sensationalist journalism, imo.

Seems to me that our technology may actually just be hitting a wall in regards
to life expectancy.

That, and the proliferation of sugar in our every-day diets has long-term
consequences (who knew? /s)

~~~
sharemywin
It's culture not technology:

"The USA has the highest child and maternal mortality, homicide rate, and
body-mass index of any high-income country, and was the first of high-income
countries to experience a halt or possibly reversal of increase in height in
adulthood, which is associated with higher longevity," wrote the study
authors.

[http://fortune.com/2017/02/23/us-life-expectancy-
projections...](http://fortune.com/2017/02/23/us-life-expectancy-projections/)

~~~
dx034
The maternal deaths statistic is not that straightforward. The Economist just
had an article about this [1]. It appears that differences in measurements can
explain that higher risk.

[1] [https://www.economist.com/news/united-
states/21725832-questi...](https://www.economist.com/news/united-
states/21725832-question-harder-answer-you-might-think-pregnancy-america-much-
deadlier)

~~~
anon1385
CDC methodology vs UK methodology doesn't explain why California has a rate of
7.3 maternal deaths per 100,000 compared with 22.0 for the US as a whole. Or
why the rate in California is falling (like other developed countries) while
the rate for the entire US is rising year on year [1].

The author just threw out data (with no explanation of their methodology)
until they got the American rate similar to the UK rate and then stopped so
they could assert that there's absolutely nothing wrong with the US health
industry. The author would have been fully aware of the regional differences
in the US because the Economist article is a response to the various articles
this summer about maternal deaths in the US which have generally focused
heavily on the California Maternal Quality Care Collaborative and the
improvements California has made compared to other states[2][3].

Not that I'd take the 21 year old interns writing without bylines in The
Economist very seriously on health matters (or anything else for that matter).

[1]
[https://archive.cdph.ca.gov/programs/mcah/Documents/MCAH%20B...](https://archive.cdph.ca.gov/programs/mcah/Documents/MCAH%20Bulletin_MMR%20Decline_May2015_v2.pdf)
[2] [https://www.vox.com/science-and-
health/2017/6/29/15830970/wo...](https://www.vox.com/science-and-
health/2017/6/29/15830970/women-health-care-maternal-mortality-rate) [3]
[http://www.npr.org/2017/05/12/527806002/focus-on-infants-
dur...](http://www.npr.org/2017/05/12/527806002/focus-on-infants-during-
childbirth-leaves-u-s-moms-in-danger)

------
galactus
Finally, some good news! /s

------
docdeek
Every cloud, huh.

------
rdiddly
So we've reached Peak Human?

------
MentallyRetired
People still get pensions?

------
johan_larson
Buy every retiree a high-performance motor cycle. They'll have some fun, and
when they die you won't need expensive end-of-life care; you'll just need a
mop and a body-bag. It'll save billions.

~~~
EADGBE
Not really, assuming every gets a $15,000 bike. it's about $20b more than we
spent last year on Medicare.

But, It really depends on the bike you're suggesting. Supply and demand for
46.2M units will surely raise the price as well.

46.2M Americans over the age of 65 (retirement age) * $15,000 a bike
(conservative, since we're talking "high-performance motor cycle") = $693B.

[http://www.kff.org/medicare/issue-brief/the-facts-on-
medicar...](http://www.kff.org/medicare/issue-brief/the-facts-on-medicare-
spending-and-financing/)

~~~
Bartweiss
It is an amortized cost. The NYT claims Medicare costs the government roughly
$6,000/person/year. So the question is whether the motorcycles reduce an
average of 3 years of life per person. (Ignoring price shocks from giving them
out.)

But... 2015 data says ~5,000 cyclists died out of a total population of
8,600,000, making for .05% of cyclists dying per year. Assuming a grant at 65
and a life expectancy of 85, that's an average of .01 years of life lost in
the first year. (And this assumes everyone rides them as much as people who
choose to buy motorcycles!) The years lost decline as people age, of course,
but even raw multiplication only gets us an average of .2 years of life lost
per person over the course of the project.

Obviously this doesn't adjust for varying risk profiles compared to normal
motorcycle riders, but we'd be talking about being more than 15 times as
likely to die as most motorcyclists to make this math add up.

All moral issues aside, it looks like the math just doesn't back this one.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/23/upshot/medicaid-gives-
the...](https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/23/upshot/medicaid-gives-the-poor-a-
reason-to-say-no-thanks.html)

[http://www.iii.org/issue-update/motorcycle-crashes](http://www.iii.org/issue-
update/motorcycle-crashes)

edit: taking bike price down to $8k doesn't really change this logic,
especially given the "not actually riding" issue I didn't factor in.

~~~
johan_larson
But you don't need to buy a new bike for every senior every year. Bikes last.
In steady state, you only need to buy one for whoever retires that year, which
is maybe 3 million per year. So the cost is roughly $45 billion per year, and
that's assuming all retirees participate.

As for cost, I expect mass production on a vast scale would ultimately drive
the price down. Every damn vehicle manufacturer is going to want a piece of
the GLR* contract. They'll knife each other in the streets for it. $10K per
unit seems like a workable target.

[*] Let me just say, in my official capacity, that the initials do not stand
for Granny's Last Ride. They stand for, uh, something else.

~~~
djrogers
> Bikes last.

Not when used in this manner...

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briantakita
Behold, the wonders of the Scientific Utopia of "Progress". GMOs, Big Pharma,
Health (Sick) care system, Compulsory Medicine, outlawing of
Natural/traditional "unproven" health care, etc.

Is it time to begin discussing the desirability/effectiveness of certain
policies, institutions, & popular beliefs?

~~~
cfontes
Sorry, but without GMOs, Big Pharma, Health (Sick) care system, Compulsory
Medicine people would be dying even faster.

I hate Bigpharma as much as the next guy but just look at the statistics of
children deaths in the early 1900 it's clear something changed and medicine
and vaccines are among it.

Completelly inflamatory statement...

~~~
evolve2017
I'm unfortunately on mobile and can't write much - however, my understanding
is that there is still some debate about the benefits of medication vs
sanitation _in overall mortality in Western countries_. While this doesn't
necessarily hold true for children, I thought I'd link to a discussion of this
debate. (Can't find the reference I wanted...)

 _Here 's a figure for death from infectious disease by the CDC - note that
antibiotics don't appreciably change the rate in decline_

[https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm4829a1.htm#fig1](https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm4829a1.htm#fig1)

 _just a random find - this paper from 1902 mentions the debate, too, with
some descriptions of 'natural experiments'_
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2401255/?page=1](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2401255/?page=1)

Also, I am not saying that antibiotics and medications don't work - just that
the story actually is more interesting than one might initially guess.

Lastly, these data discuss Western populations - I've heard the opposite may
be true in poor countries.

~~~
bluGill
Amazing how sanitation caused polio to drop rapidly for years without having
an effect on measles, then suddenly measles starting dropping. Or we can just
notice how the drop occurs right after the introduction of the vaccine.

~~~
evolve2017
I did not mean to be belligerent in my response and I'm sorry if I offended
you.

As I said above, in the Western world, sanitation and other interventions both
contributed to our current state of health. As the graph I linked to shows,
antibiotics haven't appreciably changed the rate of decline of infectious
disease. This is no way means that antibiotics and/or vaccines are
ineffective. As you point out, looking at specific diseases shows that these
interventions are helpful.

Here's the data for measles if folks are interested - there was indeed a
remarkable drop after the institution of the vaccine[1].

1\.
[https://www.quackwatch.com/03HealthPromotion/immu/immu01.htm...](https://www.quackwatch.com/03HealthPromotion/immu/immu01.html)

~~~
evolve2017
I think I'm outside the edit window for my comment. As a coda, it looks like
mortality due to measles may have been declining before the incidence of
measles began to decline; this further supports a role for other societal
developments in decreasing death from infectious disease.

This is purportedly related to the use of antibiotics to decrease bacterial
sequelae of measles. I saw an academic reference to this effect but I can't
find it again - here's a popular article. You'll note that this commentator
ascribes some of the decrease in measles-related death to sanitation.

1\. [http://www.iayork.com/MysteryRays/2009/09/02/measles-
deaths-...](http://www.iayork.com/MysteryRays/2009/09/02/measles-deaths-pre-
vaccine/)

------
LoSboccacc
Meanwhile Europeans are working older, to the same effect. The boomers enjoyed
a nice work life balance across the classes for the first time in human
history, but the ruling class managed to get us back in our place.

~~~
mbroncano
Other than the classical whataboutism, it's blatantly not true. US is mostly a
developing country regarding most social and health standards, from general
health to lifespan.

~~~
LoSboccacc
you mean it's lagging behind most indicators from other comparable countries,
including equality index, healthcare quality and average lifespan.

