Research Seminar 22.07.24: Yael Assor - As Simple as Death: How Epistemic Virtues Affect Healthcare Resource Allocation

Link for the video: Research Seminar 22.07.24: Yael Assor

Yael Assor

The Hebrew University & Ben Gurion University

As Simple as Death: How Epistemic Virtues Affect Health Resource Allocation

Despite growing global recognition that there may be certain health states that are worse than being dead (SWD), healthcare resource allocation still does not attend to SWD and consider "dead" as the worst possible state. In this talk I examine how and why this occurs through two ethnographic studies about healthcare resource allocation, the Israeli Health Basket Committee (Va'adat Sal Hatrufot) and a Bay-Area group of American health economists who develop a leading health-care policymaking tool named QALY. Drawing on this ethnography, I show that beyond fear of death or religious motivations, the exclusion of SWD pertains to economists' view that "good" data is "simple" data. The story of the avoidance of SWD is, then, also a story about the social force of simplicity as an epistemic virtue, and about the interpretations economists give to this virtue in their work. 
Gathering for coffee and refreshments at 17:45, in room 450
Chair: Shaul Katzir
The public is invite