The fact that medicine is becoming more expensive

[zakiyatasnim]

Denis Dovgopoly: Let's go to medicine.

Alexander Olshansky: There is one thought about medicine. It is not mine – Dima Yekhanurov once told me something very interesting and I am sure that it is true. We are getting closer and closer to a certain point when life expectancy will be directly related to the amount of money spent. Moreover, the connection will not be directly proportional, but exponential. That is, hypothetically speaking, if you want to live twice as long – pay four times more money, if you want twice as long – pay sixteen times more money, etc. It is clear that a lot of moral and ethical problems will arise. now is not because medicine is becoming more expensive, not because medicine takes up more and more money in the consumer basket, but because this relationship is beginning to appear that life expectancy is simply stupidly related to the amount of money spent. And since everyone wants to live longer, they pay more. Thus, it seems luxembourg number data to us that medicine is constantly becoming more expensive and taking up more and more money in our consumer basket. And, of course, against this background, insurance medicine is an obvious insanity. At least of the insurance world that we are accustomed to now. That is, this structure will definitely fall apart, but I think a little later, because there is a huge margin of safety, especially in developed countries. But I think that fifteen years is the period when a crisis of this system will occur. And this crisis is not similar to the crisis of the pension system. Because the crisis of the pension system is linear. That is, the amount of money is linearly dependent on the life expectancy of people. But with medicine, everything will be different, because there is an exponential dependence. The collapse of this system will be much harder and there will be a very hard landing. Therefore, I have no recipes at all here. We just need to prepare for the fact that there will be a period, probably a very long one, when we will have to pay a lot for medicine. It will seem expensive to us. It's not really expensive - we just want to live longer than we should.

Denis Dovgopoly: Tell me, segregation, in what planes do you see it in the future? This is a preface to the next question, what planes of conflicts in society do you see in the foreseeable future?

Alexander Olshansky: Let's start with the second part. Segregation as such is a kind of defense mechanism. It exists in society, but not because people are bad. It exists in society as a kind of defense reaction to foreign influence. As long as society is large, rich and stable, it can afford not to react to external influences, assimilate other people, put up with some other religious beliefs, etc. But when society gets into an extreme situation, becomes poor or is in an extreme situation for some other reason, for example, for military reasons, then it turns out that during World War II, all the Japanese in America were sent to concentration camps. Therefore, I think that we need to start from the conflict. Nowadays, only the lazy will not talk about the conflict of civilizations, the conflict of worldviews, etc. But this is all true. Conflict is often associated with ignorance and misunderstanding. But this does not make it softer. In general, I will not be original here, but the conflicts will be resource and civilizational, which will often look like religious. This is not quite the same thing, but it seems to me that the situation will look like this. Here we need an illustration on the topic of how different people are. Two illustrations. The first illustration I will tell about the Chinese. I call them aliens. I have been to China a lot. They are aliens. In order to understand what aliens are, I will give an example. If I ask you now, we are talking about the future, where is the future for you, geometrically? Above? Below? Behind? In front? Show me the future with your finger. Forward up, forward to the right. If you ask a Chinese, he will tell you that the future is behind. For us, Europeans, how does this look mentally? We are standing, the future is ahead, the past is behind. The Chinese are standing with their back to the future, facing the past. He looks into the past, and time flows through him from the future to the past. In fact, there is tremendous logic in this. I have great respect for Chinese culture and civilization. Because it is clear that we cannot see the future, but we can see the past. It is quite logical to look into the past, and not into the future, after all, all our life experience is the past, not the future. But imagine what scale a civilizational conflict between aliens could be, because for them we are also aliens who perceive reality so differently.