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It's not that simple, though. You can't set a budget and let everyone die once you reach your limit. Healthcare often uses "quality-adjusted life years", where

by crote 3y ago

It's not that simple, though. You can't set a budget and let everyone die once you reach your limit. Healthcare often uses "quality-adjusted life years", where the value of a medical intervention is judged by the amount and quality of the life years gained by doing the intervention. Once you set a value on a life year, it becomes a simple calculation whether the treatment is worth it. $5000 operation to save a newborn baby? Obviously worth it. $10M so a 90-year-old can live three more months? Yeah, not going to happen. The best part is that you can apply a similar principle to other things. For example, at a certain point you gain more quality-adjusted life year per $ if you spend it on non-healthcare things, such as safer roads, better education, preventing homelessness, and fighting crime.

tux3 3y ago
I agree it's not that simple, and finding better interventions in term of quality-adjusted life years seems really good! I'm not sure though how much elasticity there is in people's willingness to contribute more in response to more effective medical interventions. Setting a value on a life-year makes sense when choosing intervention, but individuals looking at their taxes or charitable contributions don't have a step-change reaction where they're happy to give without limits to the $X QALY opportunity until it becomes $X+1 I do think you have that budget in a very real sense, and I'm not sure I know exactly how sensitive it is to the effectiveness of the interventions, especially as you expand out. I'd argue that the current price of a life year still seems relatively cheap, but the healthcare system does not often complain from being inundated with too much funding.
avar 3y ago
> $5000 operation to save a > newborn baby? Obviously > worth it. Obviously? A 10 year old, sure, because you've sunk a lot of money into education etc. for that individual already. But while any given newborn has a lifetime of tax paying ahead of them, they're also easy to replace. If you made this an auction I'd bet you'd get at least two couples willing to produce newborns within a year for $2500 each.

by crote 3y ago

tux3 3y ago

I agree it's not that simple, and finding better interventions in term of quality-adjusted life years seems really good! I'm not sure though how much elasticity there is in people's willingness to contribute more in response to more effective medical interventions. Setting a value on a life-year makes sense when choosing intervention, but individuals looking at their taxes or charitable contributions don't have a step-change reaction where they're happy to give without limits to the $X QALY opportunity until it becomes $X+1 I do think you have that budget in a very real sense, and I'm not sure I know exactly how sensitive it is to the effectiveness of the interventions, especially as you expand out. I'd argue that the current price of a life year still seems relatively cheap, but the healthcare system does not often complain from being inundated with too much funding.

avar 3y ago

> $5000 operation to save a > newborn baby? Obviously > worth it. Obviously? A 10 year old, sure, because you've sunk a lot of money into education etc. for that individual already. But while any given newborn has a lifetime of tax paying ahead of them, they're also easy to replace. If you made this an auction I'd bet you'd get at least two couples willing to produce newborns within a year for $2500 each.