In Guatemala, Spanish dominates education, government and health care. That is significant for Crecencia because she has been diagnosed with cervical cancer.

Unlike Shree Ram’s patients in Nepal, Crecencia is not geographically remote: her village is only two hours from the national hospitals. Here, language and logistics restrict her access to health care.

While Crecencia’s treatment may seem expensive compared to mosquito nets, when compared to most medical costs in the US, it’s a bargain. It seems the price of life is cheaper in some countries.

At the same time, living in a rich country doesn’t make you rich, and it doesn’t make you healthy.

At Boston Health Care for the Homeless, Cheryl Kane and her team have started providing palliative care for patients with terminal illness. It is both financially and emotionally draining.

With end of life care, cost and benefit come into sharp focus because the time frame is often weeks, not years.

Just as in Guatemala, budgets are balanced with life and death consequences. But in the US options are limited. Even if policy-makers could escape the shadow of politically charged terms like ‘death panels’, the Affordable Care Act explicitly prohibits the use of cost-effective studies for Medicare.

In the UK, they have embraced data. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence uses metrics similar to the DALY to determine which treatments are available on the National Health Service.

It’s an approach that could rein in spiraling health care costs in the US. But Chris Murray, the man who invented the DALY, has reservations about such a system.

While resistance to priority-setting in health care remains strong in the US, overseas the issue is less politically charged. Nevertheless, Peter Rohloff is spending big on Crecencia.

Back in Guatemala, how does she respond to her cancer treatment?

Should we fund individual treatments whatever the cost? Or should we maximize population impact?

There is no simple answer to José’s dilemma. We are hard-wired to react to personal stories like Crecencia’s. At the same time, Big Data offers a new way to see the big picture.

That picture shows that globally we’re living longer, healthier lives, but also reveals great disparities in who enjoys these benefits. Whether driven by data, doctors on the front lines, or a balance of the two, the potential to significantly improve health care for hundreds of millions of people is well within our reach.

The documentary film is out now. Watch on Amazon or Vimeo.

The Life Equation is funded in part by The Pulitzer Center.