Uwe Reinhardt on the Cost of an Extra Year of Life

Uwe Reinhardt picked up on an earlier blogpost in which he asked how much should we be willing to pay for an extra year of life. I had objected to his framing since the high cost in the matter he raised was associated with the patent protected price for the drug in question, not actual resources from society.

The point is that the (possibly considerable) resources involved in developing the drug had already been used. The marginal resources in the form or producing additional units of the dru...