Valuing Health Care : Costs, Benefits, and Effectiveness of Pharmaceuticals and Other Medical Technologies

As expenditure on health care has increasingly become an area of public debate and concern, public and private health care decision-makers have called for more rigorous use of cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness analysis to guide spending. Concerns have arisen, however, about the overall quality of such analyses. This book discusses and evaluates best-practice methods of conducting cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness studies of pharmaceuticals and other medical technologies. It encompasses a wide variety of topics, ranging from measuring cost and effectiveness to discounting to the use of dynamic modelling of cost-effectiveness. The book also includes conceptual and practical aspects of cost-effectiveness analysis by researchers who have conducted applied research in these areas. Rarely does the book provide a singular solution to a measurement problem; rather, the reader is directed to choices among alternative approaches and an analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of each.