This came up last year when it was discovered that Leon Lederman had to sell his Nobel Prize to pay for cancer treatments. But there is more moral complexity to this issue than people appreciate. Cancer treatment is inherently expensive; it just doesn't seem that way in some other countries because the government pays from the outset.

But I don't think that's necessarily moral, compared to something like Medicaid, which requires people to spend down their assets first before the government will pay. The median net worth for someone between 65-74 is $225,000. Why should the government spend tax dollars to protect those savings for people unfortunate enough to get cancer, when there are many people unfortunate enough to never enter the middle class and be in a position to save that kind of money in the first place? Isn't it unfair to spend tax dollars protecting the inheritance of an upper-middle-class kid when that money could be given to a kid that never had a hope of an inheritance?

Put differently, there is a huge moral difference between the government ensuring that everyone can get cancer treatment, and the government intervening to protect the financial and social status of people fortunate enough to have significant assets.