How much is a year of your life really worth?

This question is becoming more and more important as drugs are getting more and more expensive.

How much is your life worth and how much should you have to pay to prolong your life by one year?

The National Health Service in England, the country’s government-run health care system, imposes a threshold of about $56,000 for a drug that will extend the patient’s life by a year.

So if a prescription drug costs under $56,000 the British government will pay for it.

In the U.S. a wrongly convicted person who is later exonerated and released from prison can also receive reimbursement.

Ohio provides $40,330 for each year a person is incarcerated, plus lost wages and attorney fees. Texas gives you $25,000 a year, with a $500,000 maximum cap. Alabama provides a minimum of $50,000 a year. And Vermont, Michigan and Hawaii will give you up to $50,000 for each year. Additionally, the federal government pays those exonerated of federal crimes $50,000 for each year they were incarcerated, twice that much if they were convicted of a capital crime.

So how much is your life worth? Of course, that depends on your earnings and many other factors.

But if you ask the governments in the U.S. and the U.K., it's only about $50,000 per year.

And that means drugs costing much more, are unlikely to ever take off.

Comments

[Wayne]

You wrote:"So if a prescription drug costs under $56,000 the British government will pay for it."

Not actually correct, Peter, the figure is $50,000 for QALY, or quality adjusted life year, so the drug could cast more than $50K but if taking it gave you more than one year of qualty life, than would be acceptable to NICE (the UK health technology assessment body which makes these life and death decisions in the UK, and which may be emulated some day in the US)

I have been getting a cancer drug that costs about $9K for one infusion, and just got my 4th today, with 3 more to go, yikes that may quickly add up close to $50K especially if they repeat in 6 monghs another 4 times, but than I hope to get more than another year of good qual life out of it...I have CLL.....