The Value of Human Life.
Include in this learning journal the following (guidance: 1.5 pages total, single spaced, 12-point font, no header) : Section I. Three things An introduction paragraph describing at least three new things that you learned from the readings (Chapter 3), in-class discussions, and any other assignments completed this week for this course. Also, describe how the new information you have gained will be useful to you now and in the future.
Section II: The Value of Human Life
Before completing this part of the Learning Journal, you should have completed the following: (1) Read pages 65-69 from Trevino and Nelson which contains a case on the Pinto Fires written by Dennis A. Gioia, (2) read the article entitled “Death Rates and Lack of Healthcare Coverage” and (3) watched the video entitled “Milton Friedman – The Value of Human Life Debate”. If you haven’t yet done so, please complete the assigned readings and then watch the video before continuing with this assignment. You may be tempted to think, as I did when I first read about the Pinto Fires case, that because this case occurred back in the 1970s that businesses and society have moved past such antiquated notions of the value of human life. However, you may be surprised to learn that monetary values are placed on human life all of the time.
In fact, in the recent discussion surrounding the proposed repeal of Obamacare (officially called the The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, signed into law in March of 2010) and replacing it with the American Healthcare Act (ACA) is an example of this. As you learned from the article that discussed the Harvard study, researchers have attributed a certain number of deaths annually (as of 2009) to a lack of health insurance. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO; a non-partisan federal agency within the legislative branch that provides budget and economic information to Congress) issued a report on March 13, 2017 claiming that approximately 14 million people less will be insured under ACA than under Obamacare by the end of 2018. Combining the Harvard study and the CBO report, along with some additional information you will need to find on your own, you can calculate the monetary value of human life that the ACA assigns by figuring out how much money the federal government is expected to save if the ACA is passed. Once you have calculated this amount, please answer the following questions, limiting this section to a maximum of one page single spaced for all 4 answers combined: 1. What did you calculate for the value of human life according to the CBO’s analysis of the ACA? 2. How did you arrive at this value? 3. What do you think of the idea of governmental policy that intends to save money for the government but has an unintended consequence of contributing to premature deaths? 4. What would the consequentialist and deontological approaches to ethics have to say about this situation? Section III: Two Questions Finally, conclude your learning journal entry with at least two questions that you still have about the content of the chapter you read this week. These questions can be about something that you did not fully understand or they could be an area you are curious about and would like to know more about.