[extropy-chat] how much to save for a future containin anti-aging medicine?

[Reason]

This is an interesting one to discuss (more links and whatnot in the
original):

http://www.fightaging.org/archives/000057.php

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As medicine improves - and improves faster thanks to the efforts of
researchers, educators, businesspeople, advocates and other pro-research
folks - we will have access to ever more options for living longer, healthy
lives. Those options are unlikely to be free, however, especially in the
early years of availability. The cost of any given medical treatment drops
as marketplace competition sets in and the technology is improved, but most
medical expenses require planning.

That said, what sort of medical expenses should you plan on for a future
that involves real anti-aging medicine? If I knew the answer, I'd go into
business as a fortune teller (and make a killing on the stock market). I
think, however, that there are some useful guesstimates that we can make
based upon possible events down the road, the plausible future of
regenerative medicine, and the way in which medical pricing has behaved in
the past.

The current cost of a major medical procedure that does not require
extensive, long-term hospitalization is around $100,000 to $200,000. This
may sound like a lot of money, but remember that it's quite possible to find
yourself a millionaire late in life - even on a modest income - if you make
good choices about saving for retirement. "The power of compound interest"
is a phrase often used in those pro-401K leaflets.

You should not expect insurance or governments to pay for real anti-aging
treatments when they become available. They might do it, or they might not.
There are several proposed future scenarios under which the medical
insurance industry and government programs are bankrupted or forced into
reform by extended healthy life spans. "Forced into reform" is a polite
euphemism for "we are not paying for your treatment." The power of compound
interest allows you to accumulate a great deal of money before you will need
to spend it on retirement and future medical technologies - so make best use
of your time and save wisely.

The trend today is towards more regulation and price controls on medicine
(which translates to scarcities, less investment in research, expensive
products, and poor quality of service). If this trend continues, it means
that we can expect more and more countries to look like Canada or France, in
which low-grade medicine is free, but complex, new medical technologies are
unavailable to the public. Once again, this indicates that you should save
enough money to pay for expected medical expenses ... plus transport costs
to a place with a more sensible government.

The first wave of healthy life extension technologies will most likely be
based on regenerative medicine and damage repair rather than damage
prevention. Starting from this point, we can guess that the worst case
scenario is that you will have to pay for replacement or major repair for
each major organ in your body during this first wave period. If we believe
that the costs for future regenerative medicine will be similar to current
transplant costs, then that is a chunk of change. We can go back and forth
on costs, but I'd start with $1,000,000 as a nice, round guesstimate.

While $1,000,000 is a scary, scary number, the best case scenario may be
much better depending on your age. If you have 50 years to go before you
expect to need even one major medical procedure, then you're in good shape
and will probably not even have to take advantage of first wave regenerative
medicine. If you are only a decade or two away from your first expected
major medical procedure, then you have plans to make.

There are good reasons for believing that costs will remain much the same
for major new medical procedures. Very little of that money actually goes
towards technology and materials (no matter what that bill says). Most of it
pays for people, time, expertise and organizational overhead. Those items
tend to remain more consistant across the years even as the underlying
technologies, skills and materials change.

There is a great deal you can do to give yourself the best chance at good
health in old age. If you are planning on spending money on new anti-aging
technologies, why hamper yourself with costly, avoidable conditions? Take
care of the health basics and you'll save an enormous amount of money.
Prevention is far better (and cheaper) than cures.

What about paying for the rest of your retirement? Well, if you're happy,
healthy and active, why retire? Life goes on, and eternal play is just as
boring as eternal work. It will be interesting to see how things evolve.

As a last word, predicting the future is has long been shown to be a job in
which random number generators and chimps do as well as humans. Regulation,
societies, research and economies could diverge off into any number of
unexpected directions, both good and bad. I hope these points demonstrate
that you should be thinking about scenarios involving future medicine and
the associated costs now, however, no matter what your age and status.

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Reason
Founder, Longevity Meme