Consider the life of a young man who has never and will never work, nor do any good turn for anyone until his dying day, and who has killed as many people as he could, who states he wants to kill more, the moment he finally gets out of prison, and to convince others to his mindset while he is in there, costing the taxpaying families of his victims a fortune. His life must be 'worth more' than theirs, and worth more than that of someone like Professor Hawkins, who couldn't move unaided, but earned an excellent living, did pioneering work and paid a lot of tax until the day he finally died, mustn't it? And the imprisoned mass killer's life must be worth more than old people like the doctor now in his 90's, still braving a war zone because nobody else dares go, and nobody else has his skills as a war injury surgeon.
My understanding (although I’m not a doctor or HCP) is that the NHS England has used ‘QALYs’ (quality-adjusted life year) as a metric for assessing cost vs. benefit for years and years. It aims to spend less than £30,000 per QALY. So an intervention that costs £50k and gives a patient another 6 months is unlikely to be worth it because that’s a cost of £100k per QALY. But an intervention that costs £50k and gives a patient another 5 years is worth it because it’s a cost of £10k per QALY.
It’s really grim to think about but doctors have to make these ugly decisions all the time (and had to long before Covid). Quality years of life left has pretty much always been the basic metric used to assist with those decisions.
Of course as other posters have said, the reality is likely to be far more complicated than ‘would you save an 80 year old or an 8 year old from a fire?’ or ‘there’s one ventilator and 2 patients, one’s 91 and one’s 35, who gets it?’
That said, I think Sumption is a bit of an arse and a rent-a-gob.