It's not later years per se but level of health which is adjusted for. We tend to think of this in terms of whether we should extend life with poor years or no

It's not later years per se but level of health which is adjusted for. We tend to think of this in terms of whether we should extend life with poor years or not but if you think about treatments or devices which won't extend life but might well have a dramatic effect on level of health, mobility etc during those years then it becomes clearer why this is an important consideration. I think most people would say that in a resource constrained world there still ought to be room to fund those things.