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:
“The sick are parasites on society. In a certain state it is indecent to go on living. To continue vegetating in cowardly dependence on physicians and machinations once the meaning of life, the right to life, has been lost ought to occasion a deep contempt within society.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“What do you want meaning for? Life is desire, not meaning!”
—Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977)
“A judgment about life has no meaning except the truth of the one who speaks last, and the mind is at ease only at the moment when everyone is shouting at once and no one can hear a thing.”
—Georges Bataille (1897–1962)