Economics, QALYs and medical ethics: a health economist's perspective

Alan Williams

No 121chedp, Working Papers from Centre for Health Economics, University of York

Abstract: This paper explores how medical practice ought to be conducted, in the face of scarcity, if our objective is to maximise the benefits of health. After explaining briefly what the cost-per-QALY criterion means, a series of ethical objections to it are considered one by one. The objectors fall into four groups: (a) those who reject all collective priority-setting as unethical; (b) those who accept the need for collective priority-setting, but believe it is contrary to medical ethics; (c) those who accept the need for collective priority-setting, and do not believe that it is contrary to medical ethics, but reject the role of QALYs in it; (d) those who accept the need for collective priority-setting in principle, but are unwilling to specify how it should be done in practice. The purpose of this discussion paper is to give each group a hard time!

Keywords: QALY; Euroqol; priority setting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 16 pages
Date: 1994-06
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:chy:respap:121chedp

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