Ethical Issues Which Have Prevented the U.S. from Maximizing Quality of Life Years

Sage Arbor

A chapter in Health-Related Quality of Life - Measurement Tools, Predictors and Modifiers from IntechOpen

Abstract: The cost of healthcare interventions varies greatly with age, with a significant fraction of cost being spent in the last two years of life. Treating a child can save orders of magnitude more life-years than an octogenarian treated for the same disease, such as cancer. While Quality-Adjusted Life Years (QALYs) can be used to plan a roadmap for how resources should be expended to maximize quality of life the execution of those plans often fail due to societal norms which trump the carefully measured QALYs, resulting in lowered average number and/or quality of years lived. The ethical issues concerning age, sex, lifestyle (smoking, drinking, obesity), cost transparency, and extreme examples (war, population explosion vs. collapse) will be discussed.

Keywords: Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALY); generation; elder care; disability-adjusted life year (DALY); fair innings; rule of rescue; standard gamble; cost transparency; organ donation; smoking; alcoholism; diabetes (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ito:pchaps:226833

DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.97561

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