It is notable that only a handful of advanced economies have awoken to the need to dedicate policy and resources to keeping their populations healthier for longer. They are doing this not only for the enormous economic benefits that will be unleashed, but also because when, in the finest democratic tradition, you ask people whether they’d rather be healthy or sick, there’s usually only one answer.

I’m not convinced that this goal can be achieved through politically conspicuous “moonshots”, even less likely through current incarnations of so-called “healthcare”. Instead, it will likely take an initially modest, but growing volley of “ground shot” commitments by individuals and institutions to first acknowledge, and then protect our collective health at both the individual and population levels.

Conventional medicine, and the healthcare systems it dominates, with a determined transactional focus on treating disease is, by definition, dealt out of leading a mission to expand the healthspan of the currently healthy, but future sick. There isn’t a business model for such a whimsical goal.

No doubt, healthcare systems are necessary for addressing our current maladies, but are insufficient for the task ahead. What were initially conceived of as insurance schemes for when bad things happen, have now devolved into utilities on which we regularly depend. As forewarned by President Eisenhower in the early 1960s, their dominance now holds many economies to ransom with ballooning costs, diminishing returns and high rates of burnout for the professionals caught within it cogs.

We need new thinking and new institutions to help escape the Sisyphean gravity of the status quo by fighting the inevitable fights, and shaping a kinder, but more efficient future that we might be proud to share with our descendants.

In Australia, wellbeing budgets go some way to lighting a path, but we also need to start routinely measuring more of what matters to us: Our health, and not just how sick we are. Based on these measures, we can start to better understand and then encourage innovative approaches that integrate social with biomedical concepts to getting us to a healthier place. The recent Blue Zones documentary on Netflix calls out an ambitious and inspiring example. Encouragingly, there are other green shoots appearing globally.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/28/opinion/aging-public-health-healthspan.html