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Well at least exercising will actually add life to your years and not just years to your life.

This I can get behind. Quality of life is worth something. Is it worth 20% of the GDP? No, but it's not where we spend those healthcare dollars anyhow. We spend them on trying to extend the lifespan by one miserable year via end of life care, mostly.

    > It's roughly 20% of the total GDP of the United States.

As of 2025, it is more like 18%. For other highly developed nations, the average is about 12.5%. I think a lot of that difference can be explained by the very high salaries paid to medical workers compared to those other highly developed nations.

    > In exchange for 20% of every hour you work for your entire adult life you get 1 extra year at the end of your life.

This isn't a very apt comparison. Think about it a different way: How much can I keep if I give up that single year of life?

There are a lot of medical problems that can make life miserable that won't kill you that are excluded from your simple objective of "how many years am I breathing."

Not only is this utilitarian nonsense, the "math" here is full logical nonsense.

It shocks me how anyone could string this pile words together and think they sound like anything at all.

> "2 out of every 10 productive dollars"

As if those dollars have anything to do with the time people work, or that they would get those dollars and time back by not caring about health.

As if the tiny portion of those dollars that actually gets spent on patient healthcare isn't dominated by end of life care.

The US healthcare system spend is so far divorced from whatever idea of "productive dollars" anyone has when it's 60-80% admin cost. The US should not even be mentioned in any conversation about the ROI of health spend.

> The US should not even be mentioned in any conversation about the ROI of health spend.

I would agree with at least this part, if I didn't live here. I'm reminded of the MRI post from a few days back. I think the stat was that Boston had more MRI's than all of Canada combined.

How much healthier are people the United States than Canada - for all that extra spend? I'm fairly certain the number is negative.

EDIT - I googled it. The Canadian life span is four years higher than the average American and they're healthier than the average American when they get there. So, yes, the number is negative.

Massachusets has more MRIs than Canada.

Wild, I looked it up. It is true. LLM tells me:

    > Canada has a total of 432 MRI machines according to the latest official national survey.
    > Per capita: An average of 10.8 units per million people, which is well below the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average of 19.4.

And Massachusetts (specifically Boston and Cambridge) has an insanely high concentration due to multiple medical schools and several very large hospital systems.

Real question and no trolling to Canada: How does Canada have such good healthcare, but so few MRIs? My point: Canada is certainly rich enough to buy and operate more. Do they not need them? Does the US just have way too many? (That is my guess.)

A few things. 1) Canada is not as wealthy, per capita, as the USA. Per Google: > The GDP per capita in the United States is roughly $94,400 USD, compared to Canada's roughly $60,300 USD (as of 2026 estimates), creating a significant and widening economic gap.

2) Canadian healthcare spends less per capita. Per Google: > The United States spends roughly double per capita on healthcare compared to Canada. Cost Comparison Per Capita • United States: Approximately $14,885 USD per person. • Canada: Approximately $7,301 USD per person (varies by estimates, with public-only spending around $5,000 USD). • Percentage of GDP: The U.S. spends about 17.2% of its GDP on healthcare, while Canada spends about 11.3%.

3) The USA believes in diagnostic testing at a higher level than Canada. Per Google: > Utilization and Intensity: The U.S. tends to utilize higher volumes of intensive diagnostic testing and specialized medical interventions.

4) Related: hospitals are private in the USA, and they buy MRI machines to bill for high-margin diagnostic tests. As you noted, the Boston CMA is a world leader in healthcare and education, and thus has a higher concentration of MRI machines.

5) Canadian healthcare simply is not as sophisticated as the health care in the USA. There have been multiple episodes of high profile / wealthier Canadians going to the US to skip waiting for treatment and getting procedures that are just not available in Canada at the present time.

So it's great, it's saved my life a couple times, but it's not a 1-1 drop in for American healthcare. Every system has trade offs, that's the lesson of engineering.

Thank you.

So is this what you tell yourself to justify sitting in your chair eating doritos and mountain dew while blasting cigs and chugging beers?

What are you even talking about?

I'm saying two things:

1) Worrying about your health is mostly useless and probably won't move the needle much unless you have obvious problems.

2) The United States spends 20% of it's GDP to accomplish nothing. That 1 year of life expectancy gain is probably within the margin of error. Certainly modern healthcare can help at the individual level, but the society is so sick that any gains are washed away by the noise and we spend a truly enormous amount of money to get nowhere.

Our worry costs us a fortune, and generally just doesn't accomplish anything worthwhile.

"unless you have obvious problems" is doing a _ton_ of work. Most people _do_ have _obvious_ problems. Their weight, their cholesterol, their alcohol use, and on and on.

Saying "if you're healthy you shouldn't worry about your health" is a meaningless thing to say. The point is that most people _do_ have obvious room for some kind of health improvement, and as other commenters have pointed out, if it's not in the clear "this will help me live an additional N years" way, then very likely it is in the "this will make my life suck less as I age" way. Eg; Being able to walk up a flight of stairs without getting deeply winded.

On your deathbed will you look back and say "I wish I had gotten more treadmill time in"?

You can see my reply to a sibling, but: no, of course not.

However, would I regret not being fit enough to go for a hike in my 60s? That's another story, and it is one which many do have the ability to intervene on.

Treadmill time as an enabler of other experiences may well be worth keeping, even if the time spent on it doesn't satisfy some imagined "will I think of it on my deathbed as time well spent?" bar. I imagine there are a great many things I won't think about on my deathbed which on their own are unremarkable or even gasp not very fun, but that is of course not a reliable measure of whether something is worth doing.