Ezekiel Emanuel: evaluation

Transcript context

…Even as a student, I would’ve paid $3k a year to stay alive. I don’t know. Most students can’t afford $3k a year, and I think that’s . . . and a year of life, remember. So, there are two problems here. What’s the right amount to spend on drugs? And that extra year of life when you’re 80, going to 81, is that really that valuable to you? You know, if I got that extra year, if I had — instead of 10 years in my 30s, if I had 11 years in my 30s, that’s a different story. I think you have to put it in context. Part of my thinking is, you have to put it in context into someone’s entire life, and how much money they have in their entire life. The average person, American with a BA, average male with a BA — women make less — but the average male with a BA, their entire lifetime earning’s about $2.2 million. Now, $3,000 a year for 70 years is about $200,000, so it’s 10 percent of all their lifetime earnings for an extra year. That just doesn’t seem to me to be a good ratio. So it’s one extra year. That’s 1 over 80; that’s 1.2 percent of a life for 10 percent of your dollars? That’s not a good ratio. There are many other things you could spend it on. He’s not saying you need to spend $3,000 a year. He’s saying an expenditure of $3,000 in expected value adds on a life-year. A one-time expenditure.…

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