What are you worth?

So I read an interesting article about health care, a topic everyone and their mom has an opinion about these days. It discusses how much we should pay to heal someone. For example, should we pay $50,000 to save a 90 yr old man for 6 months? What if it were for a week? Should we spend $100,000 to completely cure a teenager of some harmful disease? What about an elderly grandmother?

The point is, under socialized medicine (which is ANY medical plan enforced by the government, where you will go to jail if you don't pay the associated taxes) it will be a government bureaucrat making that decision. Under the present, though arguably equally cruel system, it's the market and one's earning power that determine if you live or die. I think both systems have their drawbacks, but I think it's important we realize that like it or not, the value of our life can be monetized (or perhaps quantized, as the article points out). I highly recommend the article, located here.

Also, there's a pretty funny joke in the 4th paragraph...