somebody wrote:
> "Darren New" <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote in message
> news:4a88b8fd$1@news.povray.org...
> 
>> 2 - Your health is worth virtually anything you own.
> 
> Not by a long shot. If that were the case, we would not smoke, eat more than
> necessary or unhealthy,

You're assuming rationality. When you get an immediate life-threatening 
condition, you're not likely to make a decision that dying is *better* than 
paying for the medicine.

Of course, if you have kids, you might decide to trade some months or years 
of life to leave them an inheritance or something. Everyone dies eventually. 
  When that's no longer the case, it's unlikely you'd spend less than all 
your money to avoid dying.

>> How much of your personal wealth would you spend to cure your cancer?
> 
> If cure were certain? For as it is, I don't see many patients spending their
> entire wealth on treatment (not that I believe certain cure would change
> that either).

The point I was making was contrasting your health against (say) the size of 
your apartment, the taste of your food, etc. You might say "I really like 
steak, but it's too expensive to buy often."  You're unlikely to say "I 
really like living, but it's just not worth the expense of buying my heart 
medicine." The competition is between different heart medicines, not between 
heart medicine and no heart medicine.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "We'd like you to back-port all the changes in 2.0
    back to version 1.0."
   "We've done that already. We call it 2.0."

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