Right now I am about 20 years from retirement. With about 10 more years of work I will have enough savings to pay for a very modest retirement along with paying back my share of the debt ($65k). I could do that without taking Social Security (I’m hoping for an opt-out option). Medicare is another story however, there’s no way I could afford health care when get old mainly due to it being ratcheted up by government mandates, predatory lawyers, and the doctors guild.
Very few physicians are rolling in clover any more. The big needless operational medical costs are in paperwork, hospital administration, and inflated union salaries. Freaking hospitals as constructed today are palatial boondoggles. Think of the artwork you see, the fancy glass and groovy building shapes, bridges, code requirements... there isn't much utilitarian about them. You should see what a "hospital grade" electrical plug or switch costs; it's almost as bad as military hardware. Yet for a lot of this equipment, again, the documentation is the biggie, even for applications that really don't need the additional expense from a safety perspective.
Much of that paperwork, from military to medical, exists because of lawyers. As a society, that's where I see the really big hidden costs, particularly in terms of lost opportunity in what a business would not attempt.