Reflections of the Value of Life in America
Reflections on the Value of Life in America
by Larry Kershner
What is the value of a life in our country? Do we value life in a country that generally approves of State sponsored death? Many court battles have been fought over the question of what is a life worth after murders or death in accidents of many kinds. How would you value the life of your child or your parent?
Varying estimates have been made of the value of life in the Unites States. Most private and government-run health insurance plans worldwide use $50,000 per year of quality life in order to determine whether to cover a new medical procedure. An analysis of kidney dialysis procedures by Stefanos Zenios and colleagues at Stanford Graduate School of Business concluded that $129,000 per quality-adjusted life-year was the appropriate figure.
In 2010, the U.S. Environmental Agency concluded that a life value is $9.1 million. In the same year, the U.S. Food and Drug Agency gave a number of $7.9 million. In 2013, Professor W. Kip Viscusi, Vanderbilt University’s Co-Director of the Ph.D. Program in Law and Economics after study valued a life at $9.1 million. More recently in 2015, the U.S. Transportation Department set a value of $9.4 million on a life.
As I recall when I was in the military in the late 60’s, if a soldier was killed or had major dismemberment the government would pay up to $10,000. In 2002, the U.S. government paid $100,000 to the heirs of a U.S. soldier “whose death is as a result of hostile actions and occurred in a designated combat operations or combat zone or while training for combat or performing hazardous duty”. In 2006, the number was raised to $400,000 through Servicemembers Group Life Insurance a program that provides low-cost term life insurance coverage to eligible Service members.
According to a McClatchy newspaper story of June 1, 2007, the U.S. government was making “condolence” payments for killing or injuring Iraqi and Afghan civilians or damaging their property. Generally these victims of war received up to $10,000 for both property damage or death of a civilian.
What does it say about U.S values if we make the same payment in a country that we have invaded for wrongful death and property damage? What does it say about U.S. values if a dead U.S. soldier is valued at forty times a much as an innocent civilian killed by that same U.S. soldier?