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| NEWSCan humanity afford medical technology? Medicare will go bankrupt in the near future and a recent Rand think-tank report surprisingly suggests medical innovations rather than a growing population of retirees will thrust Medicare into financial insolvency. The recent Rand report, now published in Health Affairs and available for public examination, says “We can keep people alive to incur more disease and disability.” That would burden society with overwhelming costs of care.
The Rand researchers recognize an anti-aging compound would likely mimic calorie restriction. However, the report said the “underlying mechanism is unknown” and that the compound is at this point “mythical.” It is Leonard Guarente at MIT and David Sinclair at Harvard who linked calorie restriction to expression of the Sirtuin 1 DNA repair gene, and Sinclair’s lab that identified the “mythical compound” as resveratrol. The Rand report suggests a 10-year addition to life expectancy from use of such a pill.
What is difficult for the Rand “think-tankers” to fathom is that a resveratrol red wine pill addresses all but one of the following healthcare technologies* that are anticipated to raise health care costs in coming decades. Resveratrol is a cancer vaccine, telomerase inhibitor, anti-diabetes, anti-Alzheimer’s pill, stroke rehab pill, all rolled into one.
Emerging healthcare technologies anticipated to challenge the Medicare budget
The Rand report says, of the “ten of the most promising medical technologies are forecast to increase spending greatly,” and “it is unlikely that a ‘silver bullet’ will emerge to both improve health and dramatically reduce medical spending.”
HEALTH AND COSTS OF THE FUTURE Consequences Of Health Trends And Medical Innovation For The Future Elderly, Dana P Goldman, Baoping Shang, Jayayanta Bhattacharya, Alan M Garber, et al, Health Affairs, Volume 24, page R5, 2005
Bill Sardi, reporting for Resveratrol News. Copyright 2005
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