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Comment by EADGBE | Hacker News Reader

Not really, assuming every gets a $15,000 bike. it's about $20b more than we spent last year on Medicare.

But, It really depends on the bike you're suggesting. Supply and demand for 46.2M units will surely raise the price as well.

46.2M Americans over the age of 65 (retirement age) * $15,000 a bike (conservative, since we're talking "high-performance motor cycle") = $693B.

http://www.kff.org/medicare/issue-brief/the-facts-on-medicar...

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It is an amortized cost. The NYT claims Medicare costs the government roughly $6,000/person/year. So the question is whether the motorcycles reduce an average of 3 years of life per person. (Ignoring price shocks from giving them out.)

But... 2015 data says ~5,000 cyclists died out of a total population of 8,600,000, making for .05% of cyclists dying per year. Assuming a grant at 65 and a life expectancy of 85, that's an average of .01 years of life lost in the first year. (And this assumes everyone rides them as much as people who choose to buy motorcycles!) The years lost decline as people age, of course, but even raw multiplication only gets us an average of .2 years of life lost per person over the course of the project.

Obviously this doesn't adjust for varying risk profiles compared to normal motorcycle riders, but we'd be talking about being more than 15 times as likely to die as most motorcyclists to make this math add up.

All moral issues aside, it looks like the math just doesn't back this one.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/23/upshot/medicaid-gives-the...

http://www.iii.org/issue-update/motorcycle-crashes

edit: taking bike price down to $8k doesn't really change this logic, especially given the "not actually riding" issue I didn't factor in.

But you don't need to buy a new bike for every senior every year. Bikes last. In steady state, you only need to buy one for whoever retires that year, which is maybe 3 million per year. So the cost is roughly $45 billion per year, and that's assuming all retirees participate.

As for cost, I expect mass production on a vast scale would ultimately drive the price down. Every damn vehicle manufacturer is going to want a piece of the GLR* contract. They'll knife each other in the streets for it. $10K per unit seems like a workable target.

[*] Let me just say, in my official capacity, that the initials do not stand for Granny's Last Ride. They stand for, uh, something else.

> Bikes last.

Not when used in this manner...

> a $15,000 bike

That's a really high price for a bike, you're talking a small percentage top of the line or stupid over-priced for name brand sake bikes there. Kinda feels like you might have backed in to that number?

For reference, a bike like a GSXR 600 or Ducati Monster can be had for under $10k - and one would assume a decent discount for buying a few million at a time ;-)

I don't follow bikes, and I assume the immediate demand for tens of millions of one would drive the prices up.

I also vaguely knew that HDs go for big bucks.

But we're being ridiculous here, so...

Yeah, you all are being ridiculous. No need for tens of millions of motor cycles. Just get one and pass it around. The whole point here is that the owner won't be spending decades putting around the country!!!!!!

In a rational world, demand for 10s of millions of bikes could easily be absorbed by the asian supply chain over teh course of a few years. What would likely happen though is the the contracts for them would go to a US company that sells the bikes for 10x the price and can't deliver them on time.

Oh wait, I forgot - we're being ridiculous ;-)

You don't get a new bike every year. You're talking about a 1 time payment for all 65+. After that just give it to everyone who turns 65.

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