SFS Joins 100+ Patient Groups Urging Congress to Pass the QALY Ban Bill

February 6, 2024 – Survivors for Solutions has joined a sign-on letter led by Patients Rising, along with over 100 advocacy groups representing patients from all different medical backgrounds, urging Congress to pass H.R. 485, the Protecting Healthcare for All Patients Act (QALY Ban Bill). The letter outlines the proposed legislation, which will ensure that Quality-Adjusted Life Years (QALYs), the discriminatory unit of measurement that assigns a value to a person's life, is banned from all federal programs. For many reasons, SFS and various other patient advocacy groups are in extreme opposition to the utilization of the QALY measure and push for Congress to end any further use of it.

This discriminatory metric considers those who are disabled, elderly, or sick to have a much lower value of life than others. This means that those with a “lower value” of life should not be given the same quality of medical resources as those with a “higher value” of life. This cost-effectiveness analysis is used by insurers and payers to inform medical treatment coverage decisions, giving preferential treatment to healthier patients at the expense of those who have more difficult-to-treat or advanced conditions. For example, patients living with rare illnesses, chronic conditions, or life-altering disabilities.

The QALY ban bill is an important step towards outlawing this biased and discriminatory practice that hinders the treatment of our nation’s most vulnerable patients and has no place in our healthcare system. We urge Congress to pass H.R. 485!  

Read the full letter here.