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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]This 100%. Plus all the expenses for the kids who have issues due to stressful childhoods and unreasonably societal expectations.

“People except too much. Sorry, but they do. As a population we are over treated and over medicated. It’s not sustainable. I’m 40 and I honestly can’t think of a single female friend that isn’t on an SSRI, anti anxiety, or stimulant med. 75% of the population had eaten their way into diabetes, being overweight or obesity. Now we need an expensive drug to fix it because no one wants to eat less. Women want to wait to have kids into their mid 30s and 40s use IVF. People used to have kids in their 20s or just accept kids weren’t in the cards if it didn’t happen naturally. Not anymore. I don’t think our problem is healthcare, it’s our expectations. People want to live until 100 and have every single aliment and discomfort alleviated. Getting sick and dying is part of life. Curing and fixing everything on everyone, every time, at all ages (or using up tons of resources trying) is not sustainable..”[/quote]

I think, though, that when changes affecting health status affect very large populations (not just in the US) you can't just say it's individual people and their decisions. Consider the opioid crisis. Decades ago it was routine to give people narcotics after things like wisdom tooth extraction. But specific factors drove the development of the explosion in addictions, among them the marketing of oxycontin as a non-addictive drug (I think oxycodone may have also been marketed as non-addictive, but definitely that was the case with oxycontin. Emphasis on pain as a vital sign and promoting pain assessment are also regarded as factors by many doctors (I'm not sure if there was pressure at the time to make people pain free as opposed to reducing pain levels to manageable symptoms).

With obesity it's sedentary jobs--3 million low-paid workers are chained to computers in call centers--they HAVE to be available for inbound calls all the time. There's no getting up from your desk and taking a quick walk break (I worked in one where you were required to get supervisor permission to leave to use the restroom). The food processing industry, reducing fats but adding sugars like corn syrup, all the things that have been done to drive sales (when they invented New Coke, part of the idea was that people took longer to drink the original version).

I don't think it's so much that people expect to make it to 100 in good health--the people who do have some combination of good genes and a lifestyle that tends to promote longevity. But a lot of people are sick for many, many years in their old age. My mom was on dialysis from age 83 to 87 (no diabetes, kidney failure from artery disease). She  could not live by herself and fortunately family was able to care for her. She enjoyed her bingo games and they managed a few road trips for family reunions and to visit old friends and relatives. Her dad, on the other hand, had his kidneys fail over the course of a few months one summer (he was also 87). Dialysis was not an option: this was 1974, a year after Medicare started covering dialysis, but you had to be under 65. You also could not have a "systemic disease" (how you could have kidney failure without systemic disease is something I have no clue about)[/quote]

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