Description: The competition for limited health care resources is intensifying. We urgently need an acceptable method for deciding how they should be allocated. The Quality-Adjusted Life Year, or QALY, is the most developed proposal for such allocation. In this book a distinguished team of ethicists and economists defend the core of the QALY proposal: that health care resources should be used so as to produce more years of life, of the highest possible quality. The result is the most thorough account yet of the ethical issues raised by the use of the QALY as a basis for allocating health care resources.
Review Quotes: '...timely contribution to what is certain to continue to be a vigorous debate about the ethical future of cost-utility analysis.' Bioethics '...generating a much more readable and consistent text...thoughtful and thought-provoking...' Health Economics 'Whatever readers opinions on the QALY, this book offers a useful introduction to the subject as a whole, and to the ethical basis of QALYs in particular.' Bulletin of Medical Ethics