> Are there other cases where the distasteful subject of the cost of a life (as valued by society rather than Bill Gates) comes into play?

Each time there is a decision whether to spend some money or not to reduce risk to human life, it puts a monetary value on life.

These decisions can relate to how many doctors and nurses to employ, what and how much medical equipment to buy etc, but also more removed like investing into the reliability of infrastructure, the cost of education to become a doctor, deciding how much to value economic benefit vs. potential harm to humans through pollution, etc.

Each time you decide to spend the money, you put a lower boundary on the value of life. Each time you don't spend the money, you put an upper boundary on it.

Each time these boundaries become inconsistent, you could save more lives by spending money elsewhere.

I really wish society wouldn't treat the subject of the cost of life as distasteful -- more consistent decisions would arguably raise the quality of life.