Hospitals run out of ICU beds because capacity is planned annually and crises arrive overnight. Pharmaceutical stockpiles are sized by procurement budgets, not by measured drawdown rates. Emergency reserves are either hoarded until they expire or depleted in the first week of a crisis because nobody governs the release rate. Pandemic funding arrives months after the surge has already overwhelmed the system.

The structural failure across health systems is always the same: life-critical resources are governed by administrative schedules and political budgets while demand operates on its own timeline. By the time the intervention is approved, people have already died waiting for it.

Progressive Depletion Minting (PDM) inserts a control layer beneath health resource allocation. Hospital capacity reserves, pharmaceutical stockpiles, and emergency funding are tied to measured depletion thresholds. Release is condition-gated. Contraction runs continuously. The system cannot be drained to zero in a panic because each successive drawdown makes the next one structurally harder, preserving reserve capacity for the duration of the crisis rather than burning through it in the first wave.