[JoeJonathan]

I'm looking forward to when all the people who can't pay either start murdering wealthy immortals or are galvanized by a strongman who convinces them that this is actually good for them because one day maybe they too could become immortal, and that who they should really hate are immigrants.

[yazaddaruvala]

Youth extension therapies will be cheaper for insurance companies than current hospice care. As such it will not cost more than the price of your current insurance premiums. However, while the intellectual property is still protected, there may be some hiccups but they seem unlikely.

Specifically manufacturing of medicine is cheap. The R&D is expensive. As such even if the company owning the IP kept prices artificially high. Facilities in Africa, China, India, etc would reverse engineer them and medical tourism would become even more common. This is a constant threat for COVID vaccine manufacturers today. It’s very likely the prices of youth extension are not much greater than the COVID vaccine (I.e. about $20 per dose)

Meanwhile, the population of countries with single payer health care (e.g. Canada, New Zealand, etc), will also reject intellectual property protections for a company halfway around the world. Life extension for the population is more valuable than a few potential tariffs.

[godelski]

Definitely this. What people don't get is that an optimal solution in insurance is to have everyone healthy. If everyone is healthy then there's no one drawing money from the pool and the insurance company is only collecting money.

Of course the other optimization is forcing everyone to have insurance when healthy and kicking them off when they get sick.

[simplestats]

They have actuaries to make sure they get their profit margin either way. Healthy insurance customers just make sick insurance customers happier since the price goes down.

[pfisherman]

I am going to tell you something very depressing. Saving health insurance companies money (and taking a cut of the savings) is not a viable business model. Health insurance companies are pass through entities. They do not really care about the cost of treatments.