QALY – The Health Care Blog

The Republican Case For Waste In Health Care

Mar 8, 2013• 25

By Phillip Longman

Conservatives love to apply “cost-benefit analysis” to government programs—except in health care. In fact, working with drug companies and warning of “death panels,” they slipped language into Obamacare banning cost-effectiveness research. Here’s how that happened, and why it can’t stand.

Why are you reading this when you could be doing jumping jacks?

And how come you’ve gone on to read this sentence when you could be having a colonoscopy?

You and I could be doing all sorts of things right now that we have reason to believe would improve our health and life expectancy. We could be working out at the gym, or waiting in a doctor’s office to have our bodies scanned and probed for tumors and polyps. We could be using this time to eat a steaming plate of broccoli, or attending a support group to help us overcome some unhealthy habit.

Yet you are not doing those things right now, and the chances are very strong that I am not either. Why not?

Does Your Oncologist Care?

Jul 26, 2012• 4

By Peter Ubel, MD

Facing advanced cancer, who among us wouldn’t look to our oncologist for expert advice on whether another round of chemotherapy makes sense? But do you know what your oncologist cares about, and can you be sure her recommendations map onto your own treatment preferences?

A recent study lead by Michael Kozminski (I was senior author) shows that American oncologists downplay the value of treatments that improve quality of life, compared to the value they place on life prolonging treatments.

In our study, we surveyed oncologists across the United States and presented them with hypothetical treatment scenarios, to see what value they placed on potential treatments for patients with advanced cancer.

In one scenario, we estimated how cost-effective a new life prolonging chemotherapy would need to be before oncologists prescribed it. We described the chemotherapy as prolonging patients’ lives, but also explained that we had no other data on how it impacted quality of life. On average, we found that oncologists would be willing to spend as much as $200,000 for every year of life gained by this new treatment.