On Death Panels

Perhaps a consequence of advanced medicine and medical technology is prolonging life and treating heretofore untreatable conditions. In other words, we can do more than we used to. Many of these emerging treatment phenomena are still young and therefore costly, creating a situation where we are able to treat sick people and save lives but often at staggering financial cost. So we are forced to make decisions about health economy in a way we maybe never have been before, and we are seeing the ability to save life run right up against financial prudence. Two conditions exist simultaneously - human life is sacred, saving it is costly. Therefore, what are our moral obligations to people with illnesses that can otherwise be treated but which treatment costs a great deal? From a perspective of individual sanctity and human worth, surely a wealthy person does not morally deserve better healthcare than a poor person - yet it is a reality that ongoing high-level care simply cannot be provided on an equal basis (Not every person with pancreatic cancer can have Steve Jobs's level of care). With a completely private health system the price mechanism rations care, yet makes no account for moral desert and human dignity (that someone who cannot afford a heart transplant, cancer drug, etc, does not make them undeserving of it); and with a completely public health system there is still a problem of finite resources where the federal government simply could not collect enough revenue to pay for all possible treatments (to say nothing of damage to the overall economy in trying to pursue this). There is of course an uneven ability for consumers to pay for healthcare, combined with a cutting edge healthcare system that offers lifesaving treatment often at exorbitant prices. People are dying because they can't pay - that is immoral. It is financially impossible to give everyone the same robust level of care. Can it be true that at some point it is unfeasible to prolong life; is say a six month prolongation of life worth hundreds of thousands of dollars (to an individual who can personally finance it? To one who can't?); how about an eighteen month prolongation? Two years? Five? In other words how do we square the simultaneous truths that all life is worth saving and doing so is often prohibitively expensive?