Dana Wilkie
White House may put less value on seniors, disabled
Tue May 20 02:22:53 2003
208.152.73.77

White House may put less value on seniors, disabled
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/uniontrib/sat/news/news_1n17value.html

By Dana Wilkie
COPLEY NEWS SERVICE

May 17, 2003


WASHINGTON – After senior citizens raised a ruckus, Environmental
Protection Agency Administrator Christie Whitman said last week that
her agency's rule makers would stop calculating the lives of the
elderly as less valuable than those of younger people.

But if the White House has its way, future regulations could be based
on similar calculations that not only place less value on the lives of
seniors, but also on the lives of the disabled and the sick.

A document prepared by John Graham, President Bush's "regulatory
czar," urges all federal agencies to weigh the cost of new regulations
against how many years they might add to people's lives – a
calculation that tends to give less weight to older people with fewer
years ahead of them.

Critics insist that Graham also wants agencies to give less weight to
people with a questionable "quality of life," presumably those who are
disabled or ill.

"Once government puts itself in the position of saying, 'We're going
to give more support to policies that care for young people,' you're
basically saying old people and the sick and disabled – it's not
cost-effective to save them anymore," said Wesley Warren, an
environmental economist for the Natural Resources Defense Council and
a former associate director of the Office of Management and Budget
where Graham works.

Graham acknowledged that the document – a proposed "how-to" manual on
cost-benefit analysis – encourages two approaches for reviewing new
rules that protect the environment and public health, among other things.

One, the traditional approach, assigns the same value to all lives
that might benefit from a regulation; the other assigns different
values depending on age.

"OMB believes each method has advantages and limitations, and thus the
results of both methods should be presented to policy-makers," Graham
said in an interview.

Graham's attempt to put a price tag on what some consider priceless
has a political purpose, critics said: By placing less value on whole
categories of Americans, it is easier for the Republican White House –
which often views regulations as an expensive burden on business – to
argue that the cost of a new rule outweighs the public benefit.

As director of OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, the
46-year-old Graham rules on all major health, safety and environmental
standards.

While a Harvard professor, he became a celebrated cost-benefit expert
who often questioned the way government regulated pollutants.

Since joining the Bush White House in 2001, Graham has urged the EPA
to use what critics call the "senior death discount" when considering
new rules to reduce pollution from power plants, snowmobiles and
off-road vehicles.

The discount considered the lives of those 70 and older as 37 percent
less valuable than those of younger people.

After seniors and environmentalists protested, Whitman said on May 7
that the practice would stop.

Another approach
Graham said the calculation would not be used for now, leaving the
impression that age would no longer be a regulatory consideration.

But according to the manual the White House is now reviewing, Graham
wants federal agencies to use another approach that considers age:
This one weighs the cost of a new rule against how many years it might
add to a person's life.

"It is precisely because seniors have relatively few life years
remaining that (we) have an obligation to make sure that their
preferences are weighed carefully in regulatory analysis," said
Graham. He noted that the approach values each year of life for
someone over 65 at $273,000, and for someone younger at $172,000.

Even so, the older person's overall value is still less, because he or
she has fewer years to live: A 65-year-old with 10 years left is worth
$2.7 million, while the 40-year-old with 35 years left is worth $6
million.

Harvard public health economist Milton Weinstein said this calculation
is widely used in the medical field.

"Whereas the 20-year-old might benefit . . . when they get to be 70 or
80, they will be in the same boat as people who are now 70 or 80,"
Weinstein said. "If you think of it as resource-allocation over a life
cycle, that takes some of the anti-elderly edge off of it."

But the 35-million-member AARP considers it "flat-out discriminatory,"
said Jo Reed, an expert on federal consumer matters for AARP, an
organization that looks after the interests of people over 50.

"This has very significant implications for public policy, but the
public doesn't fully understand what (Graham) is" doing, Reed said.

Rules vs. benefits
More onerous, critics said, is that Graham wants agencies to place
less value on people whose lives may be diminished because of
disability or sickness.

Graham said in an interview that he wants agencies to use this
approach in some calculations, but not when weighing the cost of new
rules against the benefits.

But just 18 months ago, Graham pushed for precisely that in a report
to the National Academy of Sciences.

In his report, Graham acknowledged that the approach "raises concerns
about fairness to the disabled and the elderly." But he gave several
reasons for supporting it.

"If person 'A' lives 10 additional life years in good health, while
person 'B' lives 10 additional life years with 30 percent impaired
health, it may not be appropriate to assign the same (value) to both
individuals," Graham wrote.

He said his plan to place different values on American lives is
similar to suggestions made under former Democratic President Clinton.
He said his office would not force agencies to use the calculations.

But Graham puts a much stronger emphasis on the approach than did
Clinton officials, who allowed agencies to use age factors, but were
openly skeptical of them.

In the proposed guidelines, Graham tells agencies they should use age
adjustments, as well as a traditional approach, "in all instances,
whether or not you are able to develop ideal estimates."

Warren, who worked at the Office of Management and Budget under
Clinton, said most agencies would consider this a requirement. "The
OMB has the final word," Warren said. "Any agency that doesn't do
this, when they come over and argue for their regulation, they'll be
challenged for an incomplete assessment."

Copyright 2003 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.

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Dollar vs. Euro

1/1/02: On New Year's Day 2002, for the first time since the end of WWII, the U.S. dollar has a serious competitor. In what amounts to the largest financial transaction in history, the currencies of 12 European nations disappeared to be replaced by the Euro, the Old Continent's ultimate attempt to resurface on the financial map and challenge the New World's supremacy.

But the dollar so far has humbled the rookie currency. When it was introduced on New Year's Day 1999 as a virtual currency on the financial markets, it was offered at the arrogant price of $1.20. It has since hard a hard time trying to even match a dollar's value.

The Money Exchange lets you hedge on the battle of the US$ with the Euro every week.

The European Central Bank issues a fixing of the Euro's value against the Dollar every trading day at 8:15 a.m. ET.
http://money.usatoday.newsfutures.com/group/group.html?groupId=1739

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