[YellOh]

I agree on indexing retirement age to lifespan, but I doubt that would get much support. See ex. the protests in France. In the U.S., the elderly are a very powerful voting bloc.

I'd argue another concern could be useless/harmful interventions. Like taxpayers paying 82k a year per person for Leqembi treatments, which seems useless at best. There are also a lot of interventions that drag on terrible-quality lives in an attempt to forestall death as long as possible; I have personal experience with elderly family members who expressed a preference for death over their treatment plans (but were no longer able to choose). If I retain the ability to choose, I would go to great lengths to avoid some of modern medicine's pallative care.

I don't know. It's all hard. Obviously I want elderly people to be healthy and cared for as much as possible, but not at infinite cost (to the taxpayer or to their own quality of life).

[ethbr0]

Medicare is an entirely different ball of yarn that should be separated as much as possible.

It's complicated enough that including it in any other reform overcomplicates the effort and kills it.

That said, I do think the "death panel" branding from Republicans was extremely intellectually dishonest and in poor taste. Everyone knew exactly what was really being discussed, and to claim mock outrage in front of cameras for political points was dodging the hard question and hurting the country.