The Value of Life

One of the greatest myths we are told throughout our lives, from childhood on into our adult years, is regarding the sanctity of human life; how very precious it is and how no price can possibly be placed on the well-being of even a single person.

But if we pay attention to the news media and are mindful of events happening globally we know that it simply is not true. It certainly sounds good, making it appear that our compassion for others of our species knows no bounds, that we revere every human life as much as our own. But just how true is that?

It would be a fairly simple matter to calculate the value of a human body in terms of its chemical composition; considering the constituent elemental makeup of our physical shells that value would work out to somewhere in the neighborhood of $140, at current prices. But what we’re looking for is the intangible value, that value placed on the essence that makes us human. That’s not quite as simple to ascertain; generally when people are asked some superlative will be offered, words like “infinite”, “invaluable” or “inestimable”. Lacking any definitive answer employing that approach, let’s turn to another method and see what sort of implied value is placed on a human, how much we’re willing to actually spend to prevent the loss of a single member of our species.

According to a 2009 study by the American Journal of Public Health, approximately 45,000 people die each year due to lack of medical insurance. This is in direct opposition to the statement made by Representative Raul Labrador (R-Idaho) that “Nobody dies because they don’t have access to health care”. Additionally, in a study by the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), a 75% reduction in someone’s income (such as losing one’s job and going on unemployment) can result in a 50% greater probability of death.

Such was the case of 54 year-old William “Billy” Koehler: He lost his job and with it his health insurance; when it came time to replace the battery in his implanted defibrillator he was unable because he did not have the money to do so, and insurance companies refused to cover him due to his “pre-existing condition”. He died in August of 2009, a victim of heart failure. The cost of this 45-minute out-patient procedure? $135,000. So immediately we’ve gone from the inestimable value of a human life to establishing a worth of $135,000 for the life of Billy Koehler. But it gets far worse.

Approximately 6,000 people succumb to AIDS in the United States each year, some of whom do so because they are unable to afford the cost of Antiretroviral Therapy (ART) medication. The cost of these life-saving drugs is approximately $1,500 per month, per Dr. Michael Kolber M.D., Director of the Comprehensive AIDS Program at the University of Miami School of Medicine. Without medication, an AIDS patient can expect to live approximately three years, so let’s do the math: $1,500 per month, times 12 months in a year, times 3 years gives a total of $54,000. So now the value of the life of an AIDS patient has dropped from invaluable to considerably less than half of what it would have taken to save the life of Billy Koehler. Let’s keep going.

Let’s take a financial plunge by taking a look at the plight of Conan Soranno, a Los Angeles photographer who, after having a serious motorcycle accident, began vomiting “buckets of blood”, in his words. As medical bills mounted and his treatment became more limited, he was forced to try to sell his Jeep to pay for expenses. Failing to do that he launched a Go Fund Me page. So what was the value of Conan Soranno’s life, according to what he was able to raise on Go Fund Me in order to literally save his life? $2,605. The inestimable value of a human life can’t possibly get any lower than that, right?

Wrong.

The price of insulin has increased insanely over the years, to the point where some of those afflicted with diabetes are dying from either lack of insulin or severely rationing their intake because of limited financial resources. From 2009 to 2019 the cumulative rate of inflation has been 19.68%, per the CPI Inflation Calculator. If the price of insulin had increased solely because of inflation, over the 10 year period from 2009 to 2019 a 10-milliliter vial of insulin would have gone from $93 to approximately $111.30; instead, because of the insatiable appetite for profit by manufacturers of pharmaceuticals, the price of that same vial of insulin in 2019 is around $290, an increase of over 300 percent. But for those who are unfamiliar with the needs of diabetics, a clarification is in order: For most cases of Type 1 diabetes, two to three vials of insulin each and every month are necessary to keep it under control; for those who have grown more resistant to the effects of insulin, as many as six vials of the $290-per-vial insulin may be needed.

This was the dilemma faced by Shane Patrick Boyle. In 2016 he moved to Arkansas to help his ailing mother and in doing so lost a deal that he had with a clinic in Texas to purchase the insulin he needed at cost. His insulin was now going to cost him $750 per month, which he didn’t have. Like so many Americans that are victims of our healthcare system, he set up a Go Fund Me account; since it was created in 2010, roughly one-third of the money raised goes to paying health care expenses. Shane died because he failed to raise the necessary funds for just one month of insulin.

The target amount he was trying to raise? $750.

The amount he was able to raise? $700.

So essentially the value of Shane Patrick Boyle’s life was set at a mere $50 - in America, the richest and most powerful nation on earth.

So that’s it, right? The bottom of the barrel? Not quite. So far any of the examples that have been given have been in the United States. But shouldn’t human life be equally as valuable regardless of the country? Globally the number one killer of children under five years of age is pneumonia; approximately 1.5 million die each year, per figures from the World Health Organization. As if those numbers weren’t bad enough, the most appalling figure is the cost of life-saving antibiotics to cure a Third World child afflicted with pneumonia. When a child dies from this easily curable disease, what would have been the cost of treatment? What was the value of that child’s life reduced to?

The answer? Thirty cents.