The phrase "a high human cost" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to describe significant negative impacts on people's lives, often in the context of decisions, policies, or events that lead to suffering or loss.
Example: "The war resulted in a high human cost, with thousands of lives lost and families torn apart."
Alternatives: "significant human toll" or "great human sacrifice".
At Bain Capital, Mr. Romney made businesses more efficient, but often at a high human cost.
Shutting down a business is often the best option for creditors, but it can have a high human cost.
The continuing separation of physical and mental-health services is a formidable obstacle to progress – it comes with "a high human cost" and adds £11bn a year to the NHS's financial burden.
Thomas, who has written extensively about the luxury-goods business, including for this newspaper, is correct that billionaires have transformed the couture world as rapidly as any other creative field, often at a high human cost.
"That's what we are paying instead of paying up front, and it's such a waste, one with a high human cost," said Shelly Gehshan, the director of the Pew Children's Dental Campaign.
When the South African government attempted to amend its laws in 1997 to avail itself of affordable generic medicines for the treatment of HIV/Aids, the full legal might of the global pharmaceutical industry bore down on the country, delaying implementation and extracting a high human cost.
And if, as some scholars argue, the Civil War was the unfinished business of the American Revolution, then Americans — like the Russians — paid a very high human cost for their revolutions.
The combination of mindless "patriotism" and "machoism" goaded on by financial interests, comes at a very high human cost.
These flows deliver high financial benefits – but at a very high human cost" [ 7].
This realisation has a tragically high human cost as people decide they cannot live with the shame rather than to seek help.
In "Private Plane", after receiving word that Blackadder and Baldrick may have been killed when shot down over German lines, Melchett tries to cheer George up by showing him a life-size model (measuring seventeen square feet) of land recaptured by the British, a commentary on the high human cost and small physical gains achieved by attacks in the middle years of the war.
