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

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.