A few weeks ago, I wrote a piece for the American Spectator in which I described QALY:
If you are under the impression that it is impossible to calculate the value of a human life, you are obviously not a progressive policy expert or health care bureaucrat. This calculation, so elusive for philosophers and sages throughout the millennia, is child’s play for such people. They have, in fact, already devised a formula for pricing out your life. It is called the “quality-adjusted-life-year” (QALY).
Pundette provides a good update on QALY as it relates to health care “reform,” making the point that the “death panels” have not gone away:
The ‘death panels’ have not been dropped from any of the bills … What was dropped by the Senate finance committee was the end-of-life counseling provision, thanks in part to Sarah Palin’s “death panel” statement.
She goes on to point out that, whether one uses QALY or the “complete lives system,” all government-run health care systems must ration care according to the “worth” of the patient’s life:
Funny, isn’t it, that the lives that are deemed most worth investing in, the adolescent through the middle-aged, are those that are physically strongest and most able to fight for their own survival.
Pundette is right. The death of the “death panel” concept has been greatly exaggerated. And we do indeed need to drive a stake through its heart.
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