Each year we add more and more expensive interventions from ECMO machines to artificial hearts. Put this together with the "if it can be done, it should be done, damn the cost" attitude we've trained ourselves to expect and we could find ourselves in for a severe reality check.

Medical technology seems strangely resistant to Moore's law (witness the price of a CT scan over time), but even if it weren't, the improvements in individual areas might not be enough to offset the growth of intervention technology in general.

Yes, anti-aging is the best possible research we could be funding. Unfortunately most people shut down when it's brought up, because thinking about your own decline and death isn't pleasant.

If they don't, there's going to be a lot of scaling back on things that don't work or aren't proven.

How will the "scaling back" be accomplished? Governments can and should stop paying large amounts for treatments that don't do much, but unless private services are banned, lots people will spend whatever they have to try to keep themselves or their loved ones alive.