Kevin gets a lot right here. Both Tyler and Matt are correct that massive new expenditures on health care wouldn't raise life expectancy much (although, for the uninsured, of whom 18,000 or so die each year due to lack of appropriate health care, access to services would make a life expectancy difference), but they're barking up the wrong tree. Once you reach a baseline of medical spending, technology utilization, and trauma centers, you've basically done your part to keep folks alive. From there, prevention is really the name of the game, increased spending won't do much at all.
It's easy, particularly in this country, to think of health care as a primarily trauma-based enterprise. That, after all, is where much of the money goes. But of all the various facets in American health services, trauma care is probably the least fucked up. You could argue back and forth on the economic merits of what we do for the very old and ill, but we are delivering those services to almost everyone who needs them.
It is, instead, the young and spry, not to mention the middle-aged but well-preserved, who miss out on a variety of treatments and services that could vastly improve their quality of life not only now, but as they get older (back problems that go untreated and worsen with time, forms of scoliosis, etc). And doing a better job at covering them and opening the pathways towards preventive, smart care, isn't even very expensive. But it does require a system where the gatekeepers aren't compelled to cut costs by cutting corners. It's much easier to ignore someone's lingering, marginal problem and save a couple bucks than to stiff a hospital on their treatment of a guy who fell down the stairs. And so that's exactly what they do.
