much of that improvement will come at a higher cost. I can't imagine stem cell technologies coming cheep for instance.
I'm banking on about the same. Health care costs up, everyday costs down.
Sorry to call you on your conjecture, but it's plain wrong.
I'll concede, as time progresses, science/medicine are--and will continue to--find new ways to address/fix/heal previously unfixable ailments, diseases and the like, meaning there is more we can do to improve, upgrade and replenish our heath. And the older we get, the more "new" diseases will come out of the woodwork (would you expect anything less when people are reaching 150 years old?). So yes more things to spend on. 100% correct.
However, more and more, medicine is migrating to the domain of technology, and thus by piggybacking on the exponential growth of technology, medicine is able to leverage phenomenal improvements.
There's a slew of examples of "exponential medicine" (and we're just getting started!) including:
- Medical imaging technology (becoming stunningly more powerful, efficient and affordable)
- Regenerative medicine (3D printers are to be integral in this)
- Information and data (both recording and analysis of)
- Personalised medicine (again, 3d printers will play a huge role, along with genomics)
- The development of nanobots to enter, observe and work within the human body.
- Vast improvements in robotic surgery
- Bionic limbs (including mind-controlled ones - watch this paraplegic woman feed herself a chocolate bar using her mind to control a bionic limb:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62fcCvK7F9g)
- Exoskeletons
...ok, I'll stop.
I won't flood this topic with a million pieces of evidence. But I'll open just one single door for you to step through, if you wish.
You can have your DNA genotyped for $99USD. Imagine that 5 years ago. Or 10. Or 50.
Genotyping is not the same as sequencing an entire genome, it's a bit rougher, and a lot quicker. But look at what's happened to the cost of sequencing a genome since the very first one, a bit over a decade ago:
https://www.genome.gov/images/content/cost_per_genome.jpg
And one final point, just about everything in our lives is getting cheaper over time. Medicine is not an exception.
Have a look in your fridge. Could the richest person on earth, 200 years ago, have obtained 1/10th of what?s in there? And kept it cool? And at what cost?
Even gaining the equivalent illumination provided by the light globe inside the fridge when you open it would have required hours of work for the typical person to attain (in the form of a single talon candle) two centuries ago.