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:
“To help, to continually help and share, that is the sum of all knowledge; that is the meaning of art.”
—Eleonora Duse (1859–1924)
“To lose sensibility, to see what one sees,
As if sight had not its own miraculous thrift,
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As if the paradise of meaning ceased
To be paradise, it is this to be destitute.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“By day, Structuralists constructed the structure of meaning and pondered the meaning of structure. By night, Deconstructivists pulled the cortical edifice down. And the next day the Structuralists started in again.”
—Tom Wolfe (b. 1931)