watch Worth on Netflix and compose a three-page paper that examines the societal inequities, health care disparities, and medical ethics portrayed in this series.

 

“Can you put a price tag on a life?

“Worth” delves into that question by telling the story of the 9/11 Victims’ Compensation Fund. The fund was created by an act of Congress to ease the suffering of families who lost loved ones in the attack and (perhaps more importantly, from the government’s standpoint) keep them from suing the two airlines whose planes were hijacked.

Is a janitor’s or schoolteacher’s life worth less than a Fortune 500 CEO’s because the CEO earns more money and owns multiple houses and cars and has stocks and so forth? That’s the sort of question that the people in charge of the fund had to answer every day between the establishment of the fund and its two-year deadline for payout.”