1/21/26 - QALYs, voting, and Olympics coverage

Good afternoon ...

Just an ordinary day today, with a variety of disability-related links ...

Congress should ban metric that devalues people with disabilities

Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Tony Coelho, Roll Call - January 15, 2026

"Therefore, we have a shared interest in barring measures that devalue the lives of older adults and people with disabilities, particularly the quality-adjusted life year, known as the QALY. This is a cost-effectiveness measure invented by other countries to ration health care. It is used to justify declining coverage of treatment that doesn’t meet a threshold for cost effectiveness based on years that person may live, or whether society deems their quality of life worth living."

There may still some value and potential in "across the aisle" bipartisanship on disability policy. But this issue is important for its own sake, not just as a place for Republicans and Democrats to meet and cooperate. QALY practices are creepy and threatening to disabled people in two ways. First, it's usually bad news when disabled peoples' health care is curtailed because of something to do with our disabilities. And second, people in general are notoriously bad at evaluating the "quality" of disabled peoples' everyday lives. These metrics always have the appearance of objectivity, but nothing stops them from being shot through with deeply subjective, ill-informed ableism.

Disability Voting News: January 14, 2026

Sarah Blahovec, The Accessible Voting Booth - January 14, 2026

"Let’s dive into what’s been happening with voting since December."

There has never been a more important time for disabled Americans to pay very close attention to our voting rights and safeguard all of the most accessible ways for us t cast our votes. The US mid-term elections are in November, and the Trump administration and its allies are openly seeking to make voting more restrictive in ways that will end up essentially denying the vote to more people with disabilities. These state by state rule changes and initiatives are often nit-picky and hard to follow. But we need to do it. Sarah Blahovec's newsletter is going to help. So expect to see it linked here more often.

NBC Making Olympics Coverage More Accessible

Shaun Heasley, Disability Scoop - January 20, 2026

"NBCUniversal said it is adding features to its broadcast and online content to reach viewers of all abilities during the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics next month."

I will be watching the 2026 Winter Olympics on Peacock, NBC's streaming platform. I'll be curious to see how these accessibility features actually work. If anyone reading this newsletter has feedback on Olympic broadcast accessibility, please send your impressions to my email address: apulrang@icloud.com.

Disability Thinking Weekday is a Monday-Friday newsletter with links and commentary on disability-related articles and other content. You can help promote Disability Thinking Weekday by forwarding it by email or posting on your social media. You can also comment by sending me an email at: apulrang@icloud.com. Collected comments are shared on the first of each month. A free subscription sends a newsletter to your email each weekday. Benefits of paid subscription include:

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