[cassowary37]

"Obscure Newspaper Discovers 40-year-old Concept Widely Used in Medical Literature" The concept of QALY goes back to 1976[0] and is a mainstay of cost-effectiveness literature. Fair to say there has sometimes been resistance to its application in the US, where we like to pretend that we are equitable in providing care. But odd that WSJ seems to have just discovered this idea.

[0] https://academic.oup.com/heapol/article/21/5/402/578296

[arkades]

I jumped into this comment thread to say precisely that. It’s absolutely outrageous how many articles about the healthcare industry basically boil down to: journalist just discovered simple, old, and public concept known to everyone even loosely in the field, relates it as a shattering innovation.

I’d say this accounts for about 30% of the healthcare articles that end up on HN. The other 70% are just garbage.

[VoidSetAndMatch]

This was probably just the usual case of the article title failing the describe the content. The word obscure isn’t used in the article itself, which actually makes an effort to explain the concept for people who haven’t come across it before. And wsj published a much shorter piece in on QALYs in 2015

wsj.com/articles/what-is-a-qaly-1449007700