If, as Bleichrodt and Quiggin suggest, the utility of any state equivalent to death is
the same then we can ignore wt (ct ). For the utility function to be a valid positive linear
transformation of the number of QALYs it becomes sufficient to ensure v(ct ) is constant.
Bleichrodt and Quiggin facilitate this by arguing that consumption is smoothed to ensure
the same consumption in each period. Utility functions are therefore of the form