[MD] Down the road of mediocrity

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Platt]
That wasn't the original point which was about a payout of pension benefits.

[Arlo]
At the risk of sounding like Rosanna Rosannadanna, "Never mind." I 
thought we were talking about salary and wages.

But it does give me a bit of brief pause. Do smokers receive higher 
pension payments because they have a lower life expectancy? I see a 
scenario where, upon retirement, one completes a "life expectancy" 
exam, and their pension payments are based on that.

Consider this USA Today article from last year. 
(http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2006-09-11-life-expectancy_x.htm)

"The longest living group, "America One," consists of 10.4 million 
Asians, with an average life expectancy of 85, says the study in the 
journal PloS Medicine. That's 27 years longer than the average 
58-year life expectancy of Native Americans in South Dakota."

Does this mean that a Native American's pension payment should be 27 
times greater than that of an Asian?

Should the "poor whites in Appalachia and the Mississippi Valley with 
an average life expectancy of 75" receive higher pension payments 
than the "3.6 million low-income whites living in Minnesota, the 
Dakotas, Iowa, Montana and Nebraska, with an average life expectancy of 79"?

On one level I can see the logic. You want to make sure someone's 
pension lasts until they pass, but at the same time make sure they 
get all of it back. But I can see some strange things happening too.