Kat: Whether we have a "health care revolution" or not, the death rate will always remain the same: one per person. (I wish I could give credit to the first person who said that.)

And no matter how healthful your lifestyle, and no matter how long you stay healthy, there will probably eventually come a time when you will need medical care to stay alive. And what will you do then? Will you say, "Well, I've lived a long and fruitful life. Rather than take my blood pressure medication, or my insulin (or whatever), I think I'll just die now"? And do you plan to keep working up to the very end, so you can pay all your own medical expenses? Do you plan to die as soon as your expenses exceed your earnings?

Making people healthier won't solve the problem of health care expenses. Making people healthier only delays the time when their medical expenses catch up with their earnings, but it's bound to catch up eventually (unless you die suddenly). And making people healthier will probably extend the time they live beyond the point where their expenses exceed their income.

I look forward to the time when our nursing homes will be occupied mostly by 100+-year-old people instead of 70- and 80-year-olds, but we will always have them, and we will always have to pay for them somehow.