- How much is a human life worth in dollars?
- Does the value of a human life change as they get older?
- Does it vary depending on their contribution to the economy or common good?
- If they are a burden on society, do they have a low low value?
- Who should get to decide what the life is worth?
- How should we decide when to show mercy for the unlucky?
- When do we allow natural consequences to punish the irresponsible?
Now are people who are financially well off worth more than those that are not? Even if they have lived a very unhealthy and irresponsible life.... I mean they can afford the care, therefore they should have it? Even if they are 80, on oxygen, somewhat confused and needing a transplant of some sort....
The poor or unlucky (ie genetically challenged) who work hard and yet are unable to afford their insurance or are refused insurance. What should be spent on them is therefore minimal? Meaning their life has little value? Even though it is a child with a curable condition who could be a productive citizen for 80 yrs after the intervention...
This leaves us with who is the final Judge of the Life's value and our Responsibility for our situation. An actuary in an insurance firm, a government bureaucrat, etc. Or is it the hand of God that caused us to born in the right country, to the right family, with the right genetics, with wealth, etc.
A higher value placed on each life and our obsession with pushing the envelope appear to be key reasons why the USA spends more on healthcare. Maybe it is like our high military spending... The rest of the globe gets the benefit without the cost.
Now this is one difficult topic!!! Your turn.....
Time Value of Life
Wiki Value of Life
Slate Cost of Living
Harvard Cost Effective Healthcare
Quality Digest Value
Kiplinger Healthcare Rationing
NY Times Cost Effectiveness
NY Times Lessons from Europe
23 comments:
* How much is a human life worth in dollars?
An infinite amount.
* Does the value of a human life change as they get older?
No.
* Does it vary depending on their contribution to the economy or common good?
No.
* If they are a burden on society, do they have a low low value?
No.
* Who should get to decide what the life is worth?
God.
* How should we decide when to show mercy for the unlucky?
How can we decide not to?
* When do we allow natural consequences to punish the irresponsible?
Never.
Now are people who are financially well off worth more than those that are not?
No.
Should they get better health care? Should health care be rationed on the basis of wealth or the ability to pay?
The entire question presupposes that "we" are entitled to decide what "your" life is worth, and I emphatically deny that you have that right. The question of how much we will pay somebody else to keep us alive (with their services and technology) is a different question, and depends entirely on our ability to pay. The question (note these are all independent questions, no linkage between them) of how much somebody ELSE should pay to keep us alive depends on their willingness AND ability to do so, based on ANY criteria they care to use. It is THEIR right to keep their wallet in their pocket and let me die. One of the criteria they may use is how responsible I have been for my own health, which will also affect how much care I need. If I have contracted with an insurance company to cover my risk, I expect that contract to be honored to its limits.
One correction: You seem to think that lifetime limits are a natural but somehow undesirable part of private insurance. You did know that there is a lifetime cap on Medicare, did you not? It brings me back to my original precept, abbreviated TANSTAAFL.
J. Ewing
"It is THEIR right to keep their wallet in their pocket and let me die."
The decision to be made by death panels, I suppose.
Let me put it this way. My personal opinion is that Tiger Woods is a twerp and a sleaze. But I also believe that his life is worth the same, and that he deserves the same level of medical treatment as anyone else.
So we have J. believing that personal luck and the benevolance of others should determine how good of healthcare a person receives... (If you are born in Africa or an impoverished American neighborhood, I wish you luck and hope you find someone that cares.)
And we have Jon who believes an infinite amount should be spent to save everyone... Even the folks he does not respect. (There goes the American deficit out of site. Can America go bankrupt?)
I once asked a very conservative Christian woman how we could help Mexico improve so that fewer people illegally entered the USA. She thought this transgression needed to be stopped by stricker enforcement, walls, etc. Whereas I thought helping them would be more beneficial to all. Her answer still sticks with me to this day... "We can't save everyone"
Is this really as black and white as J, Jon and the Conservative woman imply? Thoughts?
So we have J. believing that personal luck and the benevolance of others should determine how good of healthcare a person receives... (If you are born in Africa or an impoverished American neighborhood, I wish you luck and hope you find someone that cares.)
And we have Jon who believes an infinite amount should be spent to save everyone... Even the folks he does not respect. (There goes the American deficit out of site. Can America go bankrupt?)
I once asked a very conservative Christian woman how we could help Mexico improve so that fewer people illegally entered the USA. She thought this transgression needed to be stopped by stricker enforcement, walls, etc. Whereas I thought helping them would be more beneficial to all. Her answer still sticks with me to this day... "We can't save everyone"
Is this really as black and white as J, Jon and the Conservative woman imply? Thoughts?
"who believes an infinite amount should be spent to save everyone... Even the folks he does not respect. (There goes the American deficit out of site. Can America go bankrupt?)"
I do believe every life is infinitely valuable. I don't necessarily that an infinite amount should be spent on the care of each individual. But I do believe the value of that person, or his personal wealth or lack of wealth should be immaterial to that person's right to receive basic health care.
The questions are valuable, but basically unanswerable.
I will say this: I wish as a nation we valued quality of life half as much as we value quantity of life. We can spend tens of millions (no exaggeration) preserving the life of an ultra-preemie baby whose time in an incubator will never physically/mentally/developmentally replace the time she missed in the womb or exending the life of a terminally ill 90 year old whose life was rich and full up until we put him on a ventilator and a feeding tube, or we can focus on the quality for the vast majority of our society.
--Annie
As an aside--who here has a living will? Any specific wishes on your own end of life decisions?
Annie,
Of course they are answerable, the correct answer however is within each of as individuals...
Now don't get too far ahead of me with your question...
By the way, I have no living will yet. One of those things I continue to unwisely procrastinate on. (especially given my hobbies)There will definitely be a no heroic measures clause involved when I finally get around to it.
Jon, Sorry for my mis-paraphrasing you.
Whenever we have the urge to say a question is unanswerable, I think we have to ask ourselves whether that's because we don't want to answer it or don't like the answer that we would give. And I believe it's also the case that a decision not to answer a question is itself an answer.
You all are asking and answering two entirely different questions. You are asking what is the value of a human life (or by extension, the quality of that life), which is a question of philosophy or metaphysics. What will we PAY to extend or improve the quality of any given life is a question of economics. And I should say that is PERSONAL economics. "Society" should not have a say in how much health care I can buy if I can afford it, but they MUST have a say if I ask THEM to buy it for me.
The two questions come together if we realize one thing: There is absolutely no RIGHT to health care. All of our other rights are those things which government or society do not give us, and thus can be exercised without taking from another. Health care requires the services of people, their technologies, educations, and products. We cannot have a "right" to health care without claiming the right to confiscate other people's labor, aka slavery.
We could give every person in America the "right" to health care today, by just forcing doctors, nurses, hospitals, pharmaceutical firms, etc. to work for no pay whatsoever.
Back to the question: Your health and life are worth exactly how much of it you can afford, or convince some benefactor to afford on your behalf. Nothing more, nothing less. Everything else is just metaphysics.
J. Ewing
"Back to the question: Your health and life are worth exactly how much of it you can afford, or convince some benefactor to afford on your behalf. Nothing more, nothing less. Everything else is just metaphysics."
Therefore (barring an equitable system for delivering health care), Paris Hilton's life is worth approximately $250,000,000dollars, and my next door neighbor's life is worth about $15,000.
Allrighty then.
--Annie
OK, if the questions aren't unanswerable, then the answers are immersurably complex. So I'll maintain the answer to each of them is "It depends".
--Annie
"What will we PAY to extend or improve the quality of any given life is a question of economics."
Just to quibble, I think that's a value question. Economics is the consequence of the value decisions we make.
There are rights to certain kinds of health care. Prisoners, for example, have a constitutional right to health care. Everyone has a statutory right to emergency care. The question before us as a nation, or at least one of them, is whether we should extend those rights.
"There is absolutely no RIGHT to health care. All of our other rights are those things which government or society do not give us, and thus can be exercised without taking from another."
I don't know exactly what this means but we do have rights which others are required to pay for.
"We cannot have a "right" to health care without claiming the right to confiscate other people's labor, aka slavery."
Decisions reached through the democratic process are not forms of slavery.
"We could give every person in America the "right" to health care today, by just forcing doctors, nurses, hospitals, pharmaceutical firms, etc. to work for no pay whatsoever."
That's more or less a statement of the status quo. Medical professionals are required to render emergency room care even when they have no assurance of payment. What we are talking about is finding a way of paying them for service the law already required to perform.
And don't knock metaphysics. Many of the most important things in life are things we cannot see.
"Decisions reached through the democratic process are not forms of slavery."
Tell it to the slaves of the old Confederacy. Until 1863, the democratic process prescribed EXACTLY that, that slavery was legal. Just because something is legal doesn't make it right, and the tyranny of the majority is still tyranny.
Yes, we are a compassionate people. We can't imagine that somebody couldn't be treated for an emergency medical problem, but making it a law doesn't resolve the situation in any sort of moral fashion. Haven't we heard you cannot legislate morality? You also cannot legislate away costs. All you can do is shift them around, and make involuntary that human charity which ought to be voluntary. Involuntary charity is slavery but, if you don't like that term, propose another which means "commanding the fruits of another's labor for one's own use." It's all about who pays. If the person using the service is paying, they get what they need and can afford and no more. If someone pays for them, they donate what is needed up to what they can afford and no more. When government commands, everybody uses as much as they want (not need), and everybody ELSE pays.
J. Ewing
"It depends" is probably one of the best phrases ever created, as long as it does not prevent a person from proceeding to a decision and/or action in a reasonable time period. And it does not cause them to continually ride the fence.
The reality is that the context and situation often does have bearing on the correct decision and/or action.
Different topic: Maybe extortion is a more correct word than slavery. You do have choices, however they are usually not very pleasant.
"Tell it to the slaves of the old Confederacy. Until 1863, the democratic process prescribed EXACTLY that, that slavery was legal. Just because something is legal doesn't make it right, and the tyranny of the majority is still tyranny."
The slaves didn't have a vote.
"Yes, we are a compassionate people. We can't imagine that somebody couldn't be treated for an emergency medical problem, but making it a law doesn't resolve the situation in any sort of moral fashion."
The existence of rights is not an inherently moral issue, although moral considerations can play a role. As it happens, rendering emergency care is both a matter of right and also the morally correct choice.
"Involuntary charity is slavery but, if you don't like that term, propose another which means "commanding the fruits of another's labor for one's own use."
OK. The word I would pick is democracy.
"Maybe extortion is a more correct word than slavery."
Again, I prefer democracy. We as a people are bound by a covenant, called the U.S. Constitution. We have banded together to form a government which has the authority to make decisions on behalf of the whole. With regard to this government we have certain rights, among them the right to free speech. But nowhere in the document does it say that we have a right to have our views prevail, or that we have a right to be exempt from the lawful decisions of the government we created.
This is something I don't understand by the way. I have lost many elections. And when that happens, the thought just has never occurred to me that I had the right to set policy, or that somehow that the policies set by the winning side did not apply to me. More specifically, I may have disagreed with the policies of George Bush, but I was bound by them, and the tax dollars I paid to support them were not confiscated or extorted from me. They were paid by me as part of my obligation as a resident of the United States under the Constitution which applies to all.
Sorry, I'm not buying it. The US Constitution is not a suicide pact. It does not command We The People to give up our rights to the government, but rather that the government restrain itself and respect our individual rights. To compel me to pay taxes so that another individual person can get ANYTHING for themselves is an abrogation of those rights. It's not "legal" or "democracy," it's theft, which accompanied by the threat of force is extortion. If it compels me as a doctor to give my services away for free, that's slavery. If it rewards me for my charity, that's making me an accessory to theft and extortion. It is not a proper are for legislation in any way shape or form, and we do great violence to the constitutional meaning of "rights" when we claim some "right" to a particular good or service from someone else.
I don't care what "democracy" says if it abrogates one person's true rights to grant some pseudo-right to another person. But of course those who would rob Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul.
J. Ewing
I think most of us fiscal Conservatives fear that Ben Franklin's wise prediction/warning is ever so slowly coming true.
"When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic."
Franklin Quotes
"The US Constitution is not a suicide pact. It does not command We The People to give up our rights to the government, but rather that the government restrain itself and respect our individual rights."
The constitution establishes rules by which we are bound. Legally, and constitutionally, we do not have rights which conflict with the founding document. Whether we have moral rights that take precedence over the the law and the constitution is someone else's problem to be taken up in someone else's court. Maybe at The Hague.
"To compel me to pay taxes so that another individual person can get ANYTHING for themselves is an abrogation of those rights. It's not "legal" or "democracy," it's theft, which accompanied by the threat of force is extortion."
If you think that's true, hire a lawyer and bring a lawsuit. Alternatively, you might try calling the cops. Let us all know how that works out for you.
"If it compels me as a doctor to give my services away for free, that's slavery."
Not a completely trivial argument, by the way. Of course, the constitution as enacted in 1787 implicitly accepted the institution of slavery. In secular terms, that was America's original sin, one for which we paid and are paying a grievous price. But after the Civil War, the constitution was amended to prohibit involuntary servitude. Doctor-wise, the government conceivably could go too far in requiring them to render services for free. But as a matter of policy, we shouldn't ask that, one reason President Obama is advocating for health reform.
"I don't care what "democracy" says if it abrogates one person's true rights to grant some pseudo-right to another person."
What you choose to care about, doesn't necessarily have a lot of relevance to what you are obliged to do.
I said the Constitution is a covenant. A covenant binds us even though we haven't expressly agreed to it. It's different from a contract in that respect, but when valid (and they aren't always which is a whole other story) they are just as binding and just as enforceable.
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