31 What conflict might exist between a person’s valuation of his or her own life and the rest of society’s valuation of that person’s life? Researchers at Stanford and the University of Pennsylvania estimated that a healthy human life is worth about $129,000.

Using government records on treatment costs for kidney dialysis as a benchmark, the authors tried to pinpoint the threshold beyond which ensuring another ‘quality’ year of life was no longer financially worthwhile. The study comes amid debate over whether the government should start rationing healthcare on the basis of cost effectiveness.