The main issue is the health care system is pretty good at fixing physical hardware and quiet inept at upgrading mental software. There is another German propsal to stop funding hardware fixes if software upgrades can't be done. I personally think this is the right path.
The other issue is accumulated toxic damage we cannot fix at all.
When did we phase out leaded petrol?
(We haven't fully, but you get the idea...)
When did people mostly stop smoking carcinogens and heavy metals?
When did we start, or stop, using toxic azo dyes for clothing?
Or particular fireproofing or plasticizing chemicals that are endocrine poisons?
Or the latest plague, which hit a lot of people in the brain?
While any of those things is not predictive enough at individual level due to genetic variance, statistics of big numbers show delayed correlations that heavily imply causation, while high dose studies show obvious toxicity of this kind. And when such chronic damage happened 20-30 years ago there's not that much our medicine can do yet.
We cannot even reactivate a thymus (major gland of the immune system) well yet en masse. Or fix or reliably help livers.
I interpreted the post as an indication that hospitals have got good enough at keeping mentally absent old people alive until they die. It rings true. Certainly, not all of them are 'not there', it does not seem like a small chunk of the population either.
