Bursting bubbles? QALYs and discrimination
The use of Quality-Adjusted Life Years (QALYs) in healthcare allocation has been criticized as discriminatory against people with disabilities. This article considers a response to this criticism from Nick Beckstead and Toby Ord. They say that even if QALYs are discriminatory, attempting to avoid di...
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| Format: | Journal article |
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Cambridge University Press
2018
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| _version_ | 1826262721552711680 |
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| author | Davies, B |
| author_facet | Davies, B |
| author_sort | Davies, B |
| collection | OXFORD |
| description | The use of Quality-Adjusted Life Years (QALYs) in healthcare allocation has been criticized as discriminatory against people with disabilities. This article considers a response to this criticism from Nick Beckstead and Toby Ord. They say that even if QALYs are discriminatory, attempting to avoid discrimination – when coupled with other central principles that an allocation system should favour – sometimes leads to irrationality in the form of cyclic preferences. I suggest that while Beckstead and Ord have identified a problem, it is a misdiagnosis to lay it at the feet of an anti-discrimination principle. The problem in fact comes from a basic tension between respecting reasonable patient preferences and other ways of ranking treatment options. As such, adopting a QALY system does not solve the problem they identify. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-06T19:40:34Z |
| format | Journal article |
| id | oxford-uuid:2085d64b-964c-4b96-99be-6bf2402d27ea |
| institution | University of Oxford |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-06T19:40:34Z |
| publishDate | 2018 |
| publisher | Cambridge University Press |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | oxford-uuid:2085d64b-964c-4b96-99be-6bf2402d27ea2022-03-26T11:28:01ZBursting bubbles? QALYs and discriminationJournal articlehttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_dcae04bcuuid:2085d64b-964c-4b96-99be-6bf2402d27eaSymplectic Elements at OxfordCambridge University Press2018Davies, BThe use of Quality-Adjusted Life Years (QALYs) in healthcare allocation has been criticized as discriminatory against people with disabilities. This article considers a response to this criticism from Nick Beckstead and Toby Ord. They say that even if QALYs are discriminatory, attempting to avoid discrimination – when coupled with other central principles that an allocation system should favour – sometimes leads to irrationality in the form of cyclic preferences. I suggest that while Beckstead and Ord have identified a problem, it is a misdiagnosis to lay it at the feet of an anti-discrimination principle. The problem in fact comes from a basic tension between respecting reasonable patient preferences and other ways of ranking treatment options. As such, adopting a QALY system does not solve the problem they identify. |
| spellingShingle | Davies, B Bursting bubbles? QALYs and discrimination |
| title | Bursting bubbles? QALYs and discrimination |
| title_full | Bursting bubbles? QALYs and discrimination |
| title_fullStr | Bursting bubbles? QALYs and discrimination |
| title_full_unstemmed | Bursting bubbles? QALYs and discrimination |
| title_short | Bursting bubbles? QALYs and discrimination |
| title_sort | bursting bubbles qalys and discrimination |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT daviesb burstingbubblesqalysanddiscrimination |