Paper_011

Can we let someone die merely because saving them would be too expensive? Individuals should not be allowed to die because of expense. If doctors, relatives, and insurance providers start letting people die because of expense, a Pandora’s Box will be opened. A decision of what is too expensive, who to save, and who to let die would have to be made. How would this decision be made? These questions would have to be answered.
The question of what is too expensive to save a human life cannot be answered. How can anyone put a price a minute, hour, or day of a human’s life? No one can. If you cannot put a price on life, then saving a person on based on expense is moot. It would not be fair to save a billionaire’s daughter and not a laborer’s daughter from the same disease. Thus if a law existed that a disease was too expensive to treat, even though the billionaire had the money to treat the disease, would be forced to die.
Finally, doctors would have to forgo the Hippocratic Oath if they let patients die because of expense. Doctors cannot do any harm to their patient. By ignoring a treatment, due to the cost, is harming their patient. A doctor’s goal is to heal a patient, not worry about expense.
Human life should not be weighed by expense. Life cannot be measured by money. If society starts deciding what diseases are too expensive, then that society becomes irresponsible to their sick citizens.