Meaning
The meaning and usefulness of the QALY is debated. Perfect health is hard, if not impossible, to define. Some argue that there are health states worse than being dead, and that therefore there should be negative values possible on the health spectrum (indeed, some health economists have incorporated negative values into calculations). Determining the level of health depends on measures that some argue place disproportionate importance on physical pain or disability over mental health. The effects of a patient's health on the quality of life of others (e.g. caregivers or family) do not figure into these calculations.
Read more about this topic: Quality-adjusted Life Year
Famous quotes containing the word meaning:
“It’s given new meaning to me of the scientific term black hole.”
—Don Logan, U.S. businessman, president and chief executive of Time Inc. His response when asked how much his company had spent in the last year to develop Pathfinder, Time Inc.’S site on the World Wide Web. Quoted in New York Times, p. D7 (November 13, 1995)
“You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“A moment in time but time was made through that moment: for without the meaning there is no time, and that moment of time gave the meaning.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)