What is the worthiness of one’s life? What value can you place upon someone’s life? Is someone expensive? Is someone cheap? These are some of the pertinent questions that most actuaries encounter everyday as they try to ascertain the amount of money to be as premiums in life insurance covers. This sort of questions arise the subject of morality and ethics in the field of insurance especially in life insurance. What indicators do actuaries use to ascertain the value of one’s life? Why are some people’s lives more expensive than the others? From a moral and religious point of view, every life is important and thus equal yet insurance seems not be reading from the same script as most actuaries continue to value some lives more precious than others. The value of life is useful in various fields including; insurance, child adoption, health care and employees’ safety. This essay, therefore, explores the controversial aspects of calculating the value of human life.
Should people be allowed to place value on human life? Absolutely not. Once people are allowed to appraise the value of other people’s lives, will lead to the categorization of people in terms of their importance and usefulness (Gray par.2). The exercise itself, of placing value on other people’s lives, cannot be objectively achieved and may be marred by biases. If I am to place value on the life of a stranger and someone I know, say a family member, I would without giving it a second thought value my family member more than the stranger. This is because I consider my family member more important than the stranger. How then does placing value on people life affect the society? For example, a doctor is weighing the options of whether to remove a patient from the life support machine or not to. After a brief consideration of the pros and cons i.e. valuing the life the life of the patient, the doctor decides to remove the patient from the life support machine. Now imagine if the patient the doctor was attending to was a family member say, a son. Would be quick to reach the decision of removing from the life support machine?
In their everyday activities, most professionals encounter the need to value the life of others. Firefighters are always evaluating which fire victim should they rescue first. Surgeons are constantly trying to figure out whether to save the life of the mother or an unborn child when only one can be saved. Though I may have prefaced this argument by stating that people should not be allowed to place a value on the lives of others, it is clear that such an exercise is important. Actuaries need to undertake such an activity in order to find the exact amount of premium to be paid in life insurance covers. Doctors, usually, value the life of a mother more precious than that of an unborn child and thus save the mother. Though the whole exercise is controversial, it is paramount and thus needs to be undertaken.
Companies and governments also find the need to put a value on people’s lives. For example, companies are always determining how much to compensate to the families of their employees who lost their lives at work. Companies also calculate the amount of salaries to be paid to individuals who work in risky conditions e.g. workers in nuclear reactor plants (Dorman 20). Such salaries are based on the value of life of such an individual. Governments value the lives of their citizen in order to arrive at the exact amount of welfare payments, to compensate the families of soldiers lost in wars which is currently at $500,000 for every soldier lost in war (Viscusi and Aldy 10). These entities i.e. governments and companies should be allowed to place value on the lives of individuals but should undertake such courses with the utmost moderation. Since life is meaningful and in other circles considered ‘sacred’, such values should be objectively calculated with a lot respect being given to human life. Life is priceless and, therefore, the highest possible value should be placed.
How then is the value of one’s life arrived at? The commonly used technique to measure the value of a person’s life is the cost benefit analysis. A suitable example is the study carried out by Stefanos Zenios and his fellow scholars from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Zenios and his colleagues used kidney dialysis as a benchmark in their study that examined more than half a million patients. The researchers summed up the cost of undergoing the dialysis procedure incurred by all the patients and the benefits accrued after the procedure (Zenios et al. 2804). They found out that on average, the patients used $129,000 to undergo dialysis every year. This translates to one more quality-adjusted life year for such patients. Cost benefit analysis is used by several organizations including the Medicare (Zenios et al. 2804).
Decision makers who need to ascertain the value of lives of people in order to make decisions have introduced the aspect of ethics and morality which has shifted their way of thinking. Economists are quick to note that in economics, the value of life of an individual is calculated on a marginal basis and not the aggregate life (Lee et al. par 2). They assert that their valuation of life does not reflect their lack of moral sensitivity but a professional interest to understand human action. Therefore, they assume the value of an individual is the extra amount required to make the individual longer say, one year (Lee et al. par 2).
The Congress is an example of a body that values the lives of people. For example, before going to war, it ascertains the number of causalities that that may be collateral victims of the war. It values the lives of such individuals to see if it is still necessary to go ahead with the war or put it on halt with respect to the innocent lives that may be lost. What if the Congress assented to a war or an attack that ended up killing 180 innocent people? How would we gauge such decision-makers morally? When does the greater good overtake the importance and value of lives?
.
Works Cited
Gray, J. W. "Does Human Life Have Value?” Ethical Realism. N.p., 2010. Web. 9 Jan. 2016.
Viscusi, W. Kip, and Joseph E. Aldy. "The Value Of A Statistical Life: A Critical Review Of Market Estimates Throughout The World" Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 27.1 (2003): 5-76. Web. 9 Jan. 2016.
Lee, Dwight et al. "Marginalism and the Morality of Pricing Human Lives” N.p., 2000. Web. 9 Jan. 2016.
Zenios Stefanos et al. "Health-Related Quality Of Life and Estimates Of Utility In Chronic Kidney Disease". Kidney Int 68.6 (2005): 21-28. Web. 9 Jan. 2016.
Dorman, Peter. Markets and Mortality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Print.
