View Quality-adjusted life year
The quality-adjusted life year (QALY) is a measure of the value of life, including both the quality and the quantity of life lived. It is used in assessing the value for money of a medical intervention. The QALY model requires utility independent, risk neutral, and constant proportional tradeoff behavior.
technoprogressives favor the use of a utilitarian calculation such as QALY for the distribution of healthcare resources, and eliminating distinctions between enhancements and therapies in such calculations.
The QALY is based on the number of years of life that would be added by the intervention. Each year is assigned a value from 1.0 down to a value of 0.0 for death. Points are taken away from a year for conditions that would reduce the quality of life lived.
The QALY is use to calculate the ratio of cost to QALYs saved for a particular health care intervention, which is then used to allocate healthcare resources. QALY would means that some people would not receive treatment when cost of an intervention was not justified by the benefit to their quality of life, but since health care resources are inevitably limited, QALY enables them to be allocated so that they provide most benefit to society.
The “weight” values between 0 and 1 are usually determined by asking respondents to to rate various scenarios, such as:
*Time-trade-off - Choosing between remaining in a state of ill health for a period of time, or being restored to perfect health but having a shorter life expectancy.
*Standard gamble - Choosing between remaining in a state of ill health for a period of time, or choosing a medical intervention which has a chance of either restoring them to perfect health, or killing them.
*Visual analogue scale - Rating a state of ill health on a scale from 0 to 100, with 0 representing death and 100 representing perfect health. This method is the easiest to ask, but is the most subjective.
Another way of determining the weight associated with a health state is to use standard descriptive systems which categorizes health states based on mobility, self-care, usual activities, pain/discomfort, and anxiety/depression.
However, determining the level of health depends on measures that may place disproportionate importance on physical pain or disability over mental health. Furthermore, the effects of a patient’s health on the quality of life of others do not figure into these calculations. Finally, the weight assigned to a particular condition can vary greatly, depending on the population being surveyed. Those who do not suffer from the affliction in question will, on average, overestimate the detrimental effect on quality of life, compared to those who are afflicted.
Sources:
Citizen Cyborg: Why Democratic Societies Must Respond to the Redesigned Human of the Future
TechnoProgressive Biopolitics and Human Enhancement
Wikipedia on QALY