Questioning the Detrimental Impacts of QALY in Health Policy

March 22, 2023

While disability advocates and lawmakers have decried the use of quality-adjusted life years (QALY) in recent years, some argue that it is an indispensable measure that is unfairly maligned. For example, patient advocates argue that the focus on quality of life devalues the lives of disabled people and patients with chronic illness. Writers from the Center for the Evaluation of Value and Risk in Health (CEVR) contend this is a misunderstanding.

According to the authors, “Quantifying health gains can seem scary, or even repugnant. But we should not conflate use of QALYs with “rationing” of care. Difficult decisions about how much to pay for care are unavoidable. Use of QALYs simply informs decisions about maximizing people’s health given limited budgets, because this measure allows for comparison of health gains across treatments and diseases.”

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