I Can Has Treatment?

How many QALY's do you have left?

A QALY is a Quality Adjusted Life Year. The NICE people use them in England. To decide who gets what treatment.

NICE is the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence. (Yes, I know, they somehow misplaced the "H" in that acronym.)

Anyway, these NICE people decide whether you can have meds.

QALYs have been criticised because there is an implication that some patients will be refused or not offered treatment for the sake of other patients and, yet such choices have been made and are being made all the time. However big the pot, choices still have to be made.

You put taxes in "the pot".

And get treatments from "the pot".

How NICE. Or... not.

UPDATE: Here is a picture of Oscar, the Hospice Cat who allegedly predicts cessation of QALY: