I don't think I'd say infinitely more valuable. I'm sure that she was willing to spend infinite amounts of resources to prolong them if she gains nothing from f

I don't think I'd say infinitely more valuable. I'm sure that she was willing to spend infinite amounts of resources to prolong them if she gains nothing from forgoing the more expensive outlandish treatments. Let's say I got a terminal illness. I have a one year old son. Would I prefer to spend every last drop of our savings and go into debt to hang on a few more weeks? I hope not. Life is valuable, but delaying death is only one thing we can spend money on. At some point it has an incredibly high marginal cost. Making the patient more aware of these costs would make it possible for the actual interested parties to decide whether pushing 3 months to 3 months and a week is more important than the survivors being financially better off. I think this ties into the article as well -- the reason we don't create real wealth is because it's more lucrative to find ways to game the system and siphon off value. Think of lobbyists, the root cause of the problem and one of its most obvious examples. They create nothing. They just get their preferred regulations into law. So millions are spent on both sides to argue over whether we should mortgage our children to pay for prescription drugs for todays elderly.