> As an aside, is there not some elasticity to medical care?
Trivially true if you define 'medical care' to include cosmetic procedures, which then gets you into case-by-case debates on whether this or that orthodontic or dermatological procedure is 'cosmetic' or required to live a normal life. Which then gets into debates about what pressures society places on people to have a certain look, and just how much social damage is done to someone who has a visible port wine stain, for example.
There's also a certain elasticity of demand for preventative care and palliative care as well. For example, flu shots and pseudoephedrine: Most of us here are not going to die of the flu, and most of us aren't around people who can die of the flu and cannot get vaccinated. Similarly, most of us here can get through a cold without taking symptomatic treatment for it. So there's a certain elasticity there, depending on the person.
But giving flu shots to everyone is likely a lot less expensive than losing even a single person to a serious flu infection. A similar case can be made regarding cheap pseudoephedrine versus losing some productivity to feeling like crap without the pills.
I paid 15 dollars retail for a flu shot today. The estimated actuarial price of a human life is approximately 10 million dollars. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life)
So in principle flu shots like mine are "worth it" if it has a greater than 15 in 10 million chance of saving a life -- either mine or someone I might infect.
So, yes, for the price of a single life we could immunize about 600 thousand people. That's probably enough for herd immunity in an entire population for some region (like an entire state). Such a measure is bound to save more than one life.
By "everyone" I meant "in a company", and "losing" to mean "down for a whole week, at least". I should have worded that a lot better. My apologies.
If you're paying someone minimum wage, and they're a profit center for the company, their productivity over the week a flu would take them down is worth a lot more to you than a single flu shot. Extrapolate that to a whole department, which is likely to be lost because the flu is so contagious, and you're looking at a potential loss which is a lot more expensive than a department's worth of flu shots.
Trivially true if you define 'medical care' to include cosmetic procedures, which then gets you into case-by-case debates on whether this or that orthodontic or dermatological procedure is 'cosmetic' or required to live a normal life. Which then gets into debates about what pressures society places on people to have a certain look, and just how much social damage is done to someone who has a visible port wine stain, for example.
There's also a certain elasticity of demand for preventative care and palliative care as well. For example, flu shots and pseudoephedrine: Most of us here are not going to die of the flu, and most of us aren't around people who can die of the flu and cannot get vaccinated. Similarly, most of us here can get through a cold without taking symptomatic treatment for it. So there's a certain elasticity there, depending on the person.
But giving flu shots to everyone is likely a lot less expensive than losing even a single person to a serious flu infection. A similar case can be made regarding cheap pseudoephedrine versus losing some productivity to feeling like crap without the pills.