The Science of Making Better Decisions about Health: Cost-Effectiveness and Cost-Benefit Analysis

Departmental Working Papers from Rutgers University, Department of Economics

Abstract: Despite spending far more on medical care, Americans live shorter lives than the citizens of other high-income countries. The situation has been getting worse for at least three decades. This paper describes the main scientific methods for guiding the allocation of resources to health – cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) and cost-benefit analysis (CBA), sketches their methodological progress over the last several decades, and presents examples of how medical practice in other high-income countries, where people live longer, follows the priorities indicated by cost-effectiveness analysis. CEA and CBA support democratic decision-making processes, which have themselves benefited from scientific inquiry; these are touched on at the end of the paper.

Keywords: cost-effectiveness analysis; cost-benefit analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D61 H4 I1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 20 pages
Date: 2014-05-26
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-hea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:rut:rutres:201406

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