WHY IS A LIFE WORTH LESS WHEN IT IS SAVED BY MEDICINE?
WHY IS A LIFE WORTH LESS WHEN IT IS SAVED BY MEDICINE? I rarely see much attention paid to the values of lives saved when health care is discussed. When the annual increase in health care costs is discussed, I never see any mention of the increase in life span that is achieved each year. When lives saved by medical treatments are valued, the values used are less than the values used by U.S. federal agencies for lives saved by regulations. For example, as this article from USA Today in April, 2009 explains, in England,the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, or NICE uses a cutoff of about $45,000 per year of life to make decisions on spending for medical treatments. Even multiplying by 50 (to make the figures comparable with the valuations for a life saved, assuming that the lives saved are in midlife), gives a total of only $2,250,000.