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Don't medical professionals strive to maximize years of life/health, at least in zerosum situations? Hence the whole triage thing.

Favoring older patients could be better at that or worse. But I'd suspect it's worse unless there is data proving otherwise.

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That's how I'd like to think that they'd go about it. I'd be interested in learning the details. Say for example that younger people tend to be able to go without for a longer period than older people. I don't know if that's true, but if so you could prolong the lives of older people now but then get to the younger folks later, but not necessarily vice versa.

Quality Adjusted Life Year (QALY) is used in the UK.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-adjusted_life_year

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