HOW MUCH IS YOUR LIFE WORTH?
How much is your life worth? Juries routinely set an amount for a lost life and now medicine is about to confront it too. Cancer therapy costs are rising so dramatically that later this year, oncologists will get their first guidelines on how to have a straight talk with patients about the affordability of treatment choices, a topic too often sidestepped. The prices can be staggering and the ethical considerations are even greater. A bug part of the debate is drug company profits for lifesaving drugs the peddle. The idea: treat cost essentially as another side effect to weigh in choosing a therapy. The issue of costs call into question the idea of a “non-profit” hospital that pays its CEO and doctors multimillion salaries while enjoying copious tax deductible benefits.
