Dr. Scott Geller: Obamacare should frighten anyone who is or plans to grow old Nov 8, 2009
The Federal Council infrastructure is modeled after Britains NICE (National Institute for Clinical Excellence), which determines the dollar value of a Quality Adjusted Life Year (QALY) ... When he was Director of the Congressional Budget Office in 2007-2008 Orszag wrote repeatedly that medicines and treatments should be rationed according to their effect in increasing the number of "Quality Adjusted Life Years" (QALY) of the patient. (The News-Press -- Opinion)
Cooling is catching on for cardiac arrest patients Oct 14, 2009
The Circulation paper uses an esoteric measure called QALYs (pronounced quallies) that stands for quality life years. The UPenn team reported that the "incremental cost-effectiveness ratio" of therapeutic hypothermia for cardiac arrest is $47,168 for every QALY. While it may take a biostatistician to interpret that language, generally speaking anything less than $100,000 per QALY is considered cost effective. (CNN -- Health)
Vaccinating Boys Against Human Papillomavirus Not Cost-effective, Study Finds Oct 11, 2009
The results showed that, assuming 75% vaccination coverage and lifelong vaccine protection against cervical disease, routine HPV vaccination of 12-year-old girls was associated with a cost-effectiveness ratio of 40,310 per quality-adjusted life year (QALY), a health metric used to reflect both the excess mortality and reduced quality of life associated with disease. In the U.S., interventions with cost-effectiveness ratios below 50,000 or 100,000 per QALY are informally considered good value for... (Science Daily)
Obamacare Special Report Sep 18, 2009
These NICE people calculate what they term a Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALY) measurement using age as the baseline to calculate how much British taxpayer money is spent on an illness before the patient is cut off -- the patient is flat out refused medical treatment outright due to age and survivability rates. Long waiting lines and outright denials of service are routine in even life-threatening situations. (Human Events Online)
Rep. Jerry McNerney: Health care bill will save money, not increase deficit Aug 29, 2009
They'll base this on QALY tables (Quality of life scales like the British NHS). People like my daughter may very well be denied care. (Lodi News Sentinel, CA)
End of Life Kills Obamacare? Aug 20, 2009
These NICE people your Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALY) measurement for you. Your QALY uses your age as the baseline for how much taxpayer money is spent by the government on your illness before they cut you off, or if you are just flat out refused any sort of medical treatment outright because of your age. (Human Events Online)
Cost of Living Aug 11, 2009
The metric is the , or QALY, basically a measurement of time adjusted to account for your health ... Medical treatments are then assessed according to their cost per QALY. Say you have a cancer and there is a $100,000 treatment that would extend your life by five years, but those years would be painful ... 20, which would make those five years equal to 1 QALY. Under the British system, then, this treatment would not cost $20,000 per yearit would cost $100,000 per QALY. This system allows... (Slate)
Cooling Therapy For Cardiac Arrest Survivors Is As Cost-effective As Accepted Treatments Aug 7, 2009
Merchant said, Quality adjusted life year calculations were based on previous studies of patients with cardiac arrest. Quality adjusted life years (QALY) are a measurement of health outcomes that are calculated by combining quality of life and life expectancy. (Science Daily)
WHY PENNSYLVANIA BOOS OBAMACARE Aug 5, 2009
This is done through a "QALY" -- a "Quality-Adjusted Life-Year." In Britain, The Wall Street Journal reports, NICE refuses to pay more than 22,000 "to extend a life by six months.". In other words, had Obama's plan been in effect in 1993, given the QALY of the 63-year-old Arlen Specter and the 61-year-old Bob Casey Sr., and had they been private citizens on the Obama public-insurance plan, both might, literally, have been allowed to die. (New York Post -- Opinions)
How House Bill Runs Over Grandma Aug 1, 2009
The U.K.'s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) basically figures out who deserves treatment by using a cost-utility analysis based on the "quality adjusted life year.". One year in perfect health gets you one point. (Investors Business Daily)
Rationing for Dummies Jul 20, 2009
To sort all this out, Singer says bureaucrats could employ the quality-adjusted life-year, or QALY, a unit of measurement used for 30 years by health planners ... But Singer admits that QALY has drawbacks, such as being too ham-handed (my word). (Human Events Online)
GeneNews presents results of study on cost-effectiveness of ColonSentry(TM) for colorectal cancer screening Apr 6, 2009
The ColonSentry test is a blood test and we believe this simple fact will encourage people to undergo screening earlier. This analysis shows that the ColonSentry test is a cost-effective strategy to help preserve an organization's investment in human capital and protect them from costly healthcare claims related to late stage colorectal cancer," said Gailina Liew, Chief Operating Officer of GeneNews. "This is an important economic validation for our ColonSentry(TM) product and we believe it will... (Canada Newswire)
How Much Is A Year of Life Worth? Mar 27, 2009
It's based on the cost of a measure called the "Quality-Adjusted Life Year" QALY. A QALY scores your health on a scale from zero to one: zero if you're dead and one if you're in perfect health ... That figure is the cost per QALY.. (Time.com)
Smoking Prevention Campaign Saving Billions In Smoking-related Care Feb 22, 2009
Even under our most pessimistic analysis, the cost per quality adjusted life year saved by the campaign is substantially below the cost of other major prevention interventions and therefore its expansion would be an excellent public health investment. Using standard methods of cost and cost-utility analysis, Holtgrave and colleagues compared the costs of the truth campaign to the absence of the campaign. (Science Daily)
