Public health economics
Value of a statistical life, Quality adjusted life years…
2020-05-20 — 2025-06-07
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Placeholder. Stuff I referred to during COVID lockdowns which I have since been blessedly freed from.
1 Pollution
Fascinating. See health and chemistry.
2 QALY of interventions
Quality adjusted life years is how we measure many health outcomes, and is used to compare the cost-effectiveness of different interventions.
Analysis interventions we support in australia reveals an order-of-magnitude difference in cost-effectiveness between interventions, with some being very cost-effective and others not.
Dalziel, Segal, and Mortimer (2008) :
The median cost-effectiveness ratio was A$18,100 (~US$13,000) per QALY/DALY/LY (quality adjusted life year gained or, disability adjusted life year averted or life year gained). Some modalities tended to perform worse, such as vaccinations and diagnostics (median cost/QALY $58,000 and $68,000 respectively), than others such as allied health, lifestyle, in-patient interventions (median cost/QALY/DALY/LY all at A$9,000US$6,500). Interventions addressing some diseases such as diabetes and impaired glucose tolerance or alcohol and drug dependence tended to perform well (median cost/QALY/DALY/LY < A$3,700, < US$5,000). Interventions targeting younger persons < 25 years (median cost/QALY/DALY/LY < A$41,200) tended to perform less well than those targeting adults > 25 years (median cost/QALY/DALY/LY < A$16,000). However, there was also substantial variation in the cost effectiveness of individual interventions within and across all categories.
QALY-cost estimate of lockdown; Pretty high estimates of the cost IMO, but I agree the costs were high. I don’t know which Foster wrote this but I would not be amazed if it was Gigi who was very emphatic about this issue last time I saw her at the pub.
3 Value of a statistical life lost
TBD.
4 Value of a statistical life gained
See natalism.
5 Contagious diseases
See epidemiology.