For all intents and purposes, I said a health care system where the population lives 80 years and 10% of them are disabled was better than one where the health care system cost the same and the population lives 80 years but 20% of them are disabled.
Well, what you said was:
lifespan metric is weighted by degree of full functionality, that is various deficits [...] would all and each reduce the weighting of years of life in the metric.
That’s a weighting applied to individuals, implied to be used when making individual decisions. And you clarified:
But all other things being equal, and in the highly artificial situation that only one of Bob and Alice would be saved, it seems more reasoanble to pick the more functional than the less functional.
And my point was to investigate the value-system behind that claim. Why value “functionality” in terms of physical disabilities — and not in terms of any of the other things that people have made this decision on — such as social status, reproductive potential, earned income, skin color, belovedness by others, moral virtue, or purity of soul?
And my point was to investigate the value-system behind that claim. Why value “functionality” in terms of physical disabilities — and not in terms of any of the other things that people have made this decision on — such as social status, reproductive potential, earned income, skin color, belovedness by others, moral virtue, or purity of soul?
First, I never based it on PHYSICAL disability. For me, the paradigm disability is reduced mental status, with vegetative state being worth nothing in terms of keeping alive. But why limit myself to mental disability?
Second, I never stated, and would not agree, to make it illegal for people to spend their own resources on keeping alive anybody who wanted to be kept alive. Perhaps I am a billionaire willing to spend $1 million to keep my extremely sick 95 year old mother from dying from her cancer for another 3 months. Whoop de do for me. All I’m saying is that when totting up the value of the medical system, more accomplishment is measured from keeping a healthy 20 year old alive for an extra 3 months.
Third, it seems that underlying your case is something like, “all human life is equally valuable.” My problem with this is it denies the value of taking a risk of dying in order to improve a life. If I have someone who is willing to risk a shorter life in order to cure paralysis (maybe some sort of stem-cell spinal cord treatment that has an 80% chance of improving things and a 5% chance of killing you), then I want the improved functionality to show up in my plus column, which they don’t if “all human life is equally valuable.”
Fourth, In my opinion, it is not intellectually honest to say “all human life is equally valuable, even disabled” and “it is a great improvement in life to cure a disability.” Either disability is not as valuable an outcome as ability, or it is. To pretend it is both it seems to me can only lead to suboptimal policy and mistaken conclusions.
Well, what you said was:
That’s a weighting applied to individuals, implied to be used when making individual decisions. And you clarified:
And my point was to investigate the value-system behind that claim. Why value “functionality” in terms of physical disabilities — and not in terms of any of the other things that people have made this decision on — such as social status, reproductive potential, earned income, skin color, belovedness by others, moral virtue, or purity of soul?
First, I never based it on PHYSICAL disability. For me, the paradigm disability is reduced mental status, with vegetative state being worth nothing in terms of keeping alive. But why limit myself to mental disability?
Second, I never stated, and would not agree, to make it illegal for people to spend their own resources on keeping alive anybody who wanted to be kept alive. Perhaps I am a billionaire willing to spend $1 million to keep my extremely sick 95 year old mother from dying from her cancer for another 3 months. Whoop de do for me. All I’m saying is that when totting up the value of the medical system, more accomplishment is measured from keeping a healthy 20 year old alive for an extra 3 months.
Third, it seems that underlying your case is something like, “all human life is equally valuable.” My problem with this is it denies the value of taking a risk of dying in order to improve a life. If I have someone who is willing to risk a shorter life in order to cure paralysis (maybe some sort of stem-cell spinal cord treatment that has an 80% chance of improving things and a 5% chance of killing you), then I want the improved functionality to show up in my plus column, which they don’t if “all human life is equally valuable.”
Fourth, In my opinion, it is not intellectually honest to say “all human life is equally valuable, even disabled” and “it is a great improvement in life to cure a disability.” Either disability is not as valuable an outcome as ability, or it is. To pretend it is both it seems to me can only lead to suboptimal policy and mistaken conclusions.