The qaly—a measure of social value rather than individual utility?

Erik Nord

Health Economics, 1994, vol. 3, issue 2, 89-93

Abstract: The paper examines different interpretations of the QALY concept. It is suggested that the QALY interpreted as a measure of amounts of well‐life does not carry sufficient empirical meaning. As a measure of individuals' personal appreciation of outcomes in their own lives the QALY does not seem to work in comparisons of life saving interventions with interventions that improve health or increase life expectancy. For the QALY to be a generally empirically meaningful concept, it looks as though it needs to be interpreted as a measure of social value. This conclusion has direct implications for how values for health states should be elicited.

Date: 1994
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1002/hec.4730030205

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:hlthec:v:3:y:1994:i:2:p:89-93

Access Statistics for this article

Health Economics is currently edited by Alan Maynard, John Hutton and Andrew Jones

More articles in Health Economics from John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().