Being healthy is valuable, but it is not what makes people and the lives they live, have value. 

But even as I say that, I realize that if I make the claim that people are valuable in and of themselves just by virtue of being alive, we can count down the minutes to the counter responses to that. This will likely include value statements about moral character (some people are not as valuable because they’ve done terrible or ghoulish things) or commodification arguments (if you can’t work and provide value or provide enough for yourself, you’re a burden.)

This is why there is a frightening undercurrent to placing value on the health of an individual.

That first one comes with a slew of terrible things. The main one is that moral assertions about one’s lot in life being a direct reflection of one’s character, leads to the conclusion that anyone suffering from misfortune is suffering that misfortune because they deserve it. That would be the “bad things only happen because you’ve been bad or are bad” crowd. This leads to things like:

“Why should I pay for the healthcare of someone who makes bad decisions?”

Then of course there’s the commodification argument and it’s sinister underpinnings. If people are too sick to care for themselves, or too sick to produce as much as the other person, they’re a “burden on society.” 

“Why should I pay for someone who doesn’t contribute to society?”

*(Perhaps it’s dishonest to use that statement in this context. I am using it for a specific purpose, to lead to a particular point, but I do recognize that it is not usually used in the context of “inability”, which health would be included under. Surely it’s aimed at people who are ‘capable’ of contributing but just don’t want to, while still expecting to have access to all of their basic necessities, and to the services their society has to offer. Which I don’t generally have a problem with because I don’t think that that mindset is prevalent enough to cause a substantial lean on a society’s resources given our current production abilities. If all lives have value as I argued before, then so to do the lives of those who are capable of contributing to society, but who refuse to put back into society, if those people do exist. But I wanted to address the difference in case someone brings it up)

The “why should we support those who don’t contribute to society” mindset is the direct result of the “human beings have a monetary value” outlook, which tends to lead very quickly to conclusions that people whose healthcare is “too expensive” are producing a deficit in resources that they don’t make up for. The “cost” to “benefit” ratio is more cost than benefit, when looking at things from a purely profit based value perspective.

This actually once led to a certain group of people referring to anyone too sick to care for themselves as “useless eaters.” They had a very particular approach they used to handle this “problem”. 

They only valued people if they could contribute back, “pay back,” the cost of taking care of them, with interest (profit). If they couldn’t pay back, they were deemed “too expensive.” 

When we place health as a given that people “just need to work hard enough for and they’ll achieve it,” we are ignoring the very real limitations that the world puts onto us in regards to controlling our health. Which is blaming an individual for things outside their own control, an action that I would argue is unjust. 

But arguing that makes it easier for a system of commodification to keep that argument in place, without people feeling horrible for thinking it. If people could just “work harder and be healthy” that means anyone can work hard and be “valuable enough to contribute” and thus no longer be “a burden for the rest of us.” If they don’t, they are doing so because they’re “lazy.” And we don’t have to care about lazy people.

It’s a cynical perspective I’m selling here, and perhaps I’m coming across as dramatic in my commentary. And you’re probably right. I am pretty partial to theatrics. 

But if you disagree with the idea that we place too much emphasis on the health of individuals, in that we tie the value of an individual to their health and thus ability to produce and contribute, and that that process is directly tied to a dehumanizing commodification of our lives by a system that demands of us that we produce something, even if it is unnecessary for anyone’s survival and is only to make people whose lives are already taken care of even more wealthy, think for a moment on this:

If you became too sick to work tomorrow, and it lasted the rest of your life…

Who would pay for your survival?

And…

How terrifying would it be to worry that others might think of you as a burden for being that way?