Wouldn't that be every health insurance scheme, ever? What the poor old lack in wealth, they usually make up for with political power concentrated over decades so even in cases of single payer healthcare, the young will always subsidize the old.

If you're going to do relevant movie, I'd say Freejack. How can you not love Emilio Estevez vs. Mick Jagger and Anthony Hopkins?

This seems much relevant to the parent http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1334260/

A very disturbing movie and not just because of the inevitable gruesomeness of it. The complacency with which everyone in the film ultimately acts is just as horrifying as its premise.

For me, Futurama is the first thing that comes to mind.

So I'm kind of waiting for Nixon's head to be attached to a robot body now.

this classic B-movie seems more relevant than either:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052646/

I guess that depends if they eventually figure out how to fully connect the nerve endings in the spine.

That's presumably one of the issues that the funding from the called-upon world's billionaires is supposed to fix, you would think.

Since the idea is to save the patient from degenerative disease, recovering non-autonomous functions might not be a requirement - he only need a healthy body for now. It's still hard, but more feasible I guess.

Are you extrapolating from something that did happen with other organ transplants, or just assuming it would happen even though it didn't happen with other organ transplants?

BTW, one big problem for a rich old guy is, it's very likely that their head is the weakest link, not the body. If the body has cancer which has metastasized, the head is not very useful. If the body has some other problem, it could probably be better solved by transplanting a single organ. And most of all, a rich guy who had all the means to care for his body is very likely to have preserved it in a nice shape but his memory is failing them, etc. etc. An old brain in a new body doesn't sound that great, really, not as a means for life extension. "Just for fun" might interest some generally healthy aging people, on the other hand; these people would be heavily stigmatized though, in all likelihood, even if they managed to get the body and were willing to take all the risks.

I think it could be very useful in rare cases is the upshot.

If that was likely to happen, I would expect to see the same with human organs that we already know how to transplant. We do not. So I find your extrapolation very unlikely.