The price of life

In public health, we understand that commonplace assertions to the effect that human life is infinitely precious, or you can ' t put a price on human life, just don ' t work. Nobody treats human life as priceless, especially people who are inclined to say that sort of thing. Each of us personally takes risks such as riding in a car or climbing a ladder every day. Some people smoke tobacco, some people don ' t wash their hands after they handle raw meat. Some people work in dangerous occupations.And obviously we don ' t structure public policy around the proposition that human life is priceless. We don ' t provide affordable universal health care, to begin with. We allow the air to be polluted -- even more than before under the present administration. We could go a good deal farther than we do in the way of occupational safety and health regulations, consumer product safety, fire codes, you name it. But the political system weighs the costs and benefits of policy, with much more of the weight going to more powerful interests. Wealthy capitalists want to pollute, put their workers at risk, and don ' t want to pay taxes to support public health measures. Nevertheless even in my ideal world there would still be risks because wherever you want to draw it, there is a limit to what it ' s worth paying to avert a death. Actually I should say delay a death because we are all mortal. That ' s because resources are finite, and paying for one measure means you can ' t pay for something e...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs