Is there a "hidden hand" in economics ?

Because age pension cuts out if recipient dies (or reduces to a partial amount for eg partner), am wondering if a "hidden hand" could be at work, mysteriously generating mechanisms that are unhealthy for those holding age pensions. Such a mechanism once it got going might be self-funding. (it might be funded out of the same pot of money that funds age pensions). No-one in the system would necessarily notice what was happening.

An example might be if hospitals were encouraging age pension recipients or those in that age bracket, to report for ultrasound checks. Medical intervention might well kill off large numbers from nosocomial infection.

Interesting scenario - it would make a good book.
One thing that probably does affect the aging in my opinion, is the higher number of prescription drugs simultaneously taken by the elderly, combined by the side effects and potentially toxic interactions of those drugs. Now if you were going to write a fictional novel, you could write one about say, ineffective flu vaccines, and how the controls that were supposed to be in place were bypassed, who discovered the problem and was subjected to death threats, and how they escaped and fixed the problem. If the story were tweaked and extreme enough, it would make for very interesting reading.