[MD] How far do you go to preserve individual life?

[Arlo Bensinger]

[John]
We should focus more on Quality of life, rather than quantity. That's 
the most efficient use of our medical resources, imo.

[Arlo]
Platt's assumption is that the distribution of health services will 
always lead to some living and dying, that we cannot provide adequate 
health coverage to every single person equally; some will always be 
left out. (This may be a valid assumption, of course)

Every single first-year ethics student is given some variant of the 
"you have nine pills and ten sick people" question, "how would you 
propose to determine who gets the pills and who is left to die?"

Answers, of course, range from chance (draw straws) to quantifiables 
(age, net economic worth) to more difficult qualifiables (cultural 
importance, intelligence) to contests (physical, scholastic).

I think its undeniable that "economic worth" has been the leading 
determinant of this distribution in the capital economies of the West 
(before "socialistic" policies were adopted). Imagine that back in 
the last 1800's this question (9 pills, 10 patients) was asked, and 
imagine that a son of Andrew Carnegie was one of the patients, and 
another was a son of Joe the Miner. Who do you think was nearly 
certain to get one of the pills? The son of Carnegie, of course.

Social policies were adopted by societies that began thinking that 
economic worth should be leading (or sole!) determinant of "who lives 
and who dies". Some policies adhered to quantifiables (e.g., in times 
were vaccinations were in short supply, the old and the young would 
receive preferential treatment over others- a poor senior citizen 
would receive a vaccination before a wealthy middle-aged person), or 
urgency (a poor, but sicker person would receive an available 
transplant before a wealthy, but less sick person).

Would the MOQ support an entirely economic-based valuation of "who 
lives and who dies", of who gets those nine pills and who is left to 
go without? Would the MOQ say that those pills should go to the nine 
people able to pay the most for them? If not, how would the poorest 
person on that list have a chance at a pill over the nine wealthier persons?