IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/hlthec/v12y2003i10p873-877.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The value of life: individual preferences and social choice. A comment to Magnus Johannesson

Author

Listed:
  • Erik Nord
  • Paul Menzel
  • Jeff Richardson

Abstract

In order to avoid undue discrimination of disabled people, we have suggested that all life years gained by the disabled should count as 1 in QALY calculations as long as the health states in question are preferred to being dead by those concerned. Johannesson noted that such a convention could lead to inconsistencies between societal and individual preferences. We believe the problem derives from the structure of preferences in the real world, rather than from our specific choice of model. The inconsistency is at any rate a much smaller practical problem than Johannesson suggests. Johannesson's alternative model has some virtues, but it does not resolve the inconsistency problem. It also leads to counter intuitive results. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Suggested Citation

  • Erik Nord & Paul Menzel & Jeff Richardson, 2003. "The value of life: individual preferences and social choice. A comment to Magnus Johannesson," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 12(10), pages 873-877, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:hlthec:v:12:y:2003:i:10:p:873-877
    DOI: 10.1002/hec.838
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/hec.838
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/hec.838?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Dennis G. Fryback & Erik J. Dasbach & Ronald Klein & Barbara E.K. Klein & Norma Dorn & Kathy Peterson & Patrica A. Martin, 1993. "The Beaver Dam Health Outcomes study," Medical Decision Making, , vol. 13(2), pages 89-102, June.
    2. Alan Williams, 1997. "Intergenerational Equity: An Exploration of the ‘Fair Innings’ Argument," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 6(2), pages 117-132, March.
    3. Heather J. Sutherland & Hilary Llewellyn-Thomas & Norman F. Boyd & James E. Till, 1982. "Attitudes Toward Quality of Survival," Medical Decision Making, , vol. 2(3), pages 299-309, August.
    4. McKie, John & Richardson, Jeff, 2003. "The Rule of Rescue," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 56(12), pages 2407-2419, June.
    5. Dolan, Paul & Stalmeier, Peep, 2003. "The validity of time trade-off values in calculating QALYs: constant proportional time trade-off versus the proportional heuristic," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(3), pages 445-458, May.
    6. Erik Nord & Jose Luis Pinto & Jeff Richardson & Paul Menzel & Peter Ubel, 1999. "Incorporating societal concerns for fairness in numerical valuations of health programmes," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 8(1), pages 25-39, February.
    7. Anand, Sudhir & Hanson, Kara, 1997. "Disability-adjusted life years: a critical review," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(6), pages 685-702, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Erik Nord, 2011. "Discounting future health benefits: the poverty of consistency arguments," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 20(1), pages 16-26, January.
    2. Erik Nord & Jose Luis Pinto & Jeff Richardson & Paul Menzel & Peter Ubel, 1999. "Incorporating societal concerns for fairness in numerical valuations of health programmes," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 8(1), pages 25-39, February.
    3. José‐Luis Pinto‐Prades & José‐María Abellán‐Perpiñán, 2005. "Measuring the health of populations: the veil of ignorance approach," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 14(1), pages 69-82, January.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. E. Wetering & E. Stolk & N. Exel & W. Brouwer, 2013. "Balancing equity and efficiency in the Dutch basic benefits package using the principle of proportional shortfall," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 14(1), pages 107-115, February.
    2. Franken, Margreet & Stolk, Elly & Scharringhausen, Tessa & de Boer, Anthonius & Koopmanschap, Marc, 2015. "A comparative study of the role of disease severity in drug reimbursement decision making in four European countries," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 119(2), pages 195-202.
    3. Michaël Schwarzinger & Jean‐Louis Lanoë & Erik Nord & Isabelle Durand‐Zaleski, 2004. "Lack of multiplicative transitivity in person trade‐off responses," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 13(2), pages 171-181, February.
    4. Attema, Arthur E. & Brouwer, Werner B.F., 2012. "A test of independence of discounting from quality of life," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 22-34.
    5. David Canning, 2006. "The Economics of HIV/AIDS in Low-Income Countries: The Case for Prevention," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 20(3), pages 121-142, Summer.
    6. Mæstad, Ottar & Norheim, Ole Frithjof, 2009. "Eliciting people's preferences for the distribution of health: A procedure for a more precise estimation of distributional weights," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 570-577, May.
    7. Magnus Johannesson, 2001. "Should we aggregate relative or absolute changes in QALYs?," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 10(7), pages 573-577, October.
    8. Amartya Sen, 2002. "Why health equity?," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 11(8), pages 659-666, December.
    9. Duncan Mortimer, 2006. "The Value of Thinly Spread QALYs," PharmacoEconomics, Springer, vol. 24(9), pages 845-853, September.
    10. Hansen, Lise Desireé & Kjær, Trine, 2019. "Disentangling public preferences for health gains at end-of-life: Further evidence of no support of an end-of-life premium," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 236(C), pages 1-1.
    11. Mansdotter, Anna & Lindholm, Lars & Ohman, Ann, 2004. "Women, men and public health--how the choice of normative theory affects resource allocation," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 69(3), pages 351-364, September.
    12. Colin Green, 2001. "On the societal value of health care: what do we know about the person trade‐off technique?," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 10(3), pages 233-243, April.
    13. Paul Dolan & Rebecca Shaw & Aki Tsuchiya & Alan Williams, 2005. "QALY maximisation and people's preferences: a methodological review of the literature," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 14(2), pages 197-208, February.
    14. Andrew M. Jones (ed.), 2012. "The Elgar Companion to Health Economics, Second Edition," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 14021.
    15. Whitty, Jennifer A. & Littlejohns, Peter, 2015. "Social values and health priority setting in Australia: An analysis applied to the context of health technology assessment," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 119(2), pages 127-136.
    16. Attema, Arthur E. & Brouwer, Werner B.F. & l’Haridon, Olivier & Pinto, Jose Luis, 2015. "Estimating sign-dependent societal preferences for quality of life," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 229-243.
    17. Thomas Ward & Ruben E. Mujica-Mota & Anne E. Spencer & Antonieta Medina-Lara, 2022. "Incorporating Equity Concerns in Cost-Effectiveness Analyses: A Systematic Literature Review," PharmacoEconomics, Springer, vol. 40(1), pages 45-64, January.
    18. Han Bleichrodt & Jose Luis Pinto, 2012. "Conceptual Foundations for Health Utility Measurement," Chapters, in: Andrew M. Jones (ed.), The Elgar Companion to Health Economics, Second Edition, chapter 35, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    19. Mara Airoldi & Alec Morton, 2009. "Adjusting life for quality or disability: stylistic difference or substantial dispute?," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 18(11), pages 1237-1247, November.
    20. Bleichrodt, Han & Herrero, Carmen & Pinto, Jose Luis, 2002. "A proposal to solve the comparability problem in cost-utility analysis," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(3), pages 397-403, May.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:hlthec:v:12:y:2003:i:10:p:873-877. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/jhome/5749 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.