There was a hearing in Iowa City, IA on this topic.
This article from NYTimes.com
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E.P.A. Drops Age-Based Cost Studies
May 8, 2003
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE and JOHN TIERNEY
BALTIMORE, May 7 - A Bush administration policy to base
some regulations on a calculation that the life of each
person older than 70 should be valued less than the life of
a younger person has antagonized older Americans and
environmental groups, and it has stirred tensions among
federal agencies.
Instead of the traditional assumption that all lives saved
from cleaner air are worth the same, administration
officials in two environmental studies included an
alternative method that used two values, $3.7 million for
the life a person younger than 70 and $2.3 million for an
older person, a 37 percent difference.
Critics call the policy the "senior death discount" and say
the administration is turning on older Americans as a
rationale to weaken environmental regulations.
Today, Christie Whitman, administrator of the Environmental
Protection Agency, said her agency had never applied the
policy in its decision making and never would.
"The senior discount factor has been stopped," Mrs. Whitman
told reporters at a meeting here. "It has been
discontinued. E.P.A. will not, I repeat, not, use an
age-adjusted analysis in decision making."
John D. Graham, the regulations administrator at the Office
of Management and Budget who has been the champion of the
policy, said the calculation would not be used because it
was based on an old study. Dr. Graham insisted he was
committed to the principle of analyzing how many years of
life would be added by a particular measure, not simply the
number of lives.
He has proposed that all agencies' cost-benefit
calculations include the "life expectancy" method and the
simpler "statistical lives" approach.
"My instinct has always been to present policy makers and
the public with both perspectives, so you can get a sense
of the difference," he said.
The life-expectancy approach could bolster the case for
health measures that benefit children, Dr. Graham said, and
in some cases it could help the elderly.
"It can distinguish a regulation that may extend senior
citizens' life by 5 or 10 years, compared to a regulation
that will extend their life by only one year," he said.
A spokesman for the Office of Management and Budget, Trent
Duffy, made clear that in considering the cost-benefit
calculations the administration should not be seen as
insensitive.
"The Bush administration's commitment to human life should
not be questioned," Mr. Duffy said. "The Bush
administration has been aggressive in protecting human life
of all ages, from extending prenatal care benefits for
pregnant women to filing a friend of the court brief
against euthanasia in Oregon."
The life-expectancy analysis, intended to identify policies
that would add the most years to people's lives, also
accompanied two cost-benefit analyses at the E.P.A., as
well as at other agencies in the Clinton administration.
Critics say it has been used more aggressively under the
leadership of Dr. Graham, a bête noire of environmentalists
who has been urging rigorous cost-benefit analyses for all
federal agencies.
For more than a month, the elderly and environmental groups
have protested at hearings on the relatively arcane
cost-benefit methodology. The "death discount" debate
offers a window on tensions between Ms. Whitman's agency
and Dr. Graham's, tensions worsened by Dr. Graham's broad
power and authority. At stake are billions of dollars - and
thousands of lives - as the government weighs the costs of
regulating pollution against the benefits to health and the
environment.
Environmentalists say the problem with Dr. Graham's
approach is that it inflates the costs of regulations and
diminishes the perceived benefits, making it easier for the
administration to propose a relaxation of rules.
Carol M. Browner, the E.P.A. administrator in the Clinton
administration, said that under the traditional method a
particular air pollution regulation was shown to have
benefits of $77 billion but that the life-expectancy
method, along with other more conservative assumptions,
would lower the benefits, to $8 billion.
"They are adjusting the calculations to say that the
benefits of less pollution are much lower," Ms. Browner
said.
Although similar analyses were conducted when she was
administrator, she said, no decisions were based on them.
Dr. Graham, founder of the Harvard Center for Risk
Analysis, said the life-expectancy analysis was being used
merely to provide extra guidance, not set policy. He noted
that the Food and Drug Administration had used it for
nearly a decade.
Other experts said that moral and practical reasons gave
priority to policies to protect younger people because
those policies add the most years of life, but that those
arguments were not easy for politicians to make when
confronting elderly voters.
In an interview, Dr. Graham said the $1.4 million
difference was not longer considered valid because it was
based on outdated studies in England and Canada that were
not relevant here. He insisted that the overall approach
was valid and would be a factor in decision making at the
E.P.A. and elsewhere.
Asked outside the meeting whether it was the elderly and
environmentalists' protests that had prompted her to change
her mind about the policy, Mrs. Whitman said: "It was never
a question of changing our minds. We weren't the ones who .
. . "
Mrs. Whitman said her agency's officials did not want to
base any of their decisions on life-expectancy analysis.
"We are more comfortable with the traditional methodology
we've been using because it has been peer reviewed, it's
what we've been using right along, and a lot of
environmental economists would say that is the more
appropriate methodology to use," she said. "This life-span
one is fine if you're talking about medical determinations.
Does it make more sense to give scarce lung transplants to
someone 75 or someone 17? That's when they use the life
expectancy. But we don't think that that's as appropriate
for the work that we do."
Representatives of environmental groups at the meeting
today said Mrs. Whitman's announcement quelled critics who
were going to speak against it. They were not impressed
with her announcement, saying, as John Stanton, an air
expert with the National Environmental Trust, put it, "She
was as clear as mud."
Mrs. Whitman, however, acknowledged that Dr. Graham's
method would still accompany her agency's studies,
including those on President Bush's "Clear Skies" proposal.
Those methods, with higher costs and lower benefits, would
be available to members of Congress.
Environmentalists said if the agency was not using the
life-expectancy method, it should expunge it. Milton C.
Weinstein, a professor at the Harvard School of Public
Health and a pioneer of life-expectancy analysis, said it
had become routine among medical researchers but still
aroused controversy.
"There's an equity argument that every citizen should be
entitled to an equal claim on resources and shouldn't be
penalized for the fact that they've lived a larger portion
of their life span," Professor Weinstein said. "But you can
never save a life. You can only prolong it. When you give
medical treatment or make the environment safer, the
relevant question is how much of a life you can save. Most
people, if given the choice between applying resources to
save a 10-year-old or a 70-year-old, would choose the
10-year-old."
Many environmentalists have been skeptical of cost-benefit
analyses and have accused Republicans of using them as an
excuse not to regulate polluting industries and other
environmental hazards. They spoke out against the
appointment of Dr. Graham, one of the most prominent
experts in regulatory cost-benefit analysis.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/08/politics/08REGS.html?ex=1053392694&ei=1&en=fdd7e64a13c590db
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