IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/hlthec/v30y2021i1p104-112.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Social tariffs and democratic choice—Do population‐based health state values reflect the will of the people?

Author

Listed:
  • Paul Peter Schneider

Abstract

In economic evaluations of health technologies, health outcomes are commonly measured in terms of quality‐adjusted life years (QALYs). QALYs are the product of time and health‐related quality of life. Health‐related quality of life, in turn, is determined by a social tariff, which is supposed to reflect the public's preference over health states. This study argues that, because of the tariff's role in the societal decision‐making process, it should not be understood as merely an operational (statistical) definition of health, but as a major instrument of democratic participation. I outline what implications this might have for both the method used to aggregate individual preferences, and the set of individuals whose preferences should count. Alternative tariff specifications and decision rules are explored, and future research directions are proposed.

Suggested Citation

  • Paul Peter Schneider, 2021. "Social tariffs and democratic choice—Do population‐based health state values reflect the will of the people?," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(1), pages 104-112, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:hlthec:v:30:y:2021:i:1:p:104-112
    DOI: 10.1002/hec.4179
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/hec.4179
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/hec.4179?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kevin W. S. Roberts, 1980. "Interpersonal Comparability and Social Choice Theory," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 47(2), pages 421-439.
    2. Nancy J. Devlin & Koonal K. Shah & Brendan J. Mulhern & Krystallia Pantiri & Ben van Hout, 2019. "A new method for valuing health: directly eliciting personal utility functions," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 20(2), pages 257-270, March.
    3. Barry Dewitt & Alexander Davis & Baruch Fischhoff & Janel Hanmer, 2017. "An Approach to Reconciling Competing Ethical Principles in Aggregating Heterogeneous Health Preferences," Medical Decision Making, , vol. 37(6), pages 647-656, August.
    4. Daniel M. Hausman, 2010. "Valuing health: a new proposal," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 19(3), pages 280-296, March.
    5. Paul Dolan & Rebecca Shaw & Aki Tsuchiya & Alan Williams, 2005. "QALY maximisation and people's preferences: a methodological review of the literature," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 14(2), pages 197-208, February.
    6. Dolan, Paul, 2000. "The measurement of health-related quality of life for use in resource allocation decisions in health care," Handbook of Health Economics, in: A. J. Culyer & J. P. Newhouse (ed.), Handbook of Health Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 32, pages 1723-1760, Elsevier.
    7. Richard Cookson, 2005. "QALYs and the capability approach," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 14(8), pages 817-829, August.
    8. Culyer, A J, 1989. "The Normative Economics of Health Care Finance and Provision," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 5(1), pages 34-58, Spring.
    9. Coast, Joanna & Smith, Richard D. & Lorgelly, Paula, 2008. "Welfarism, extra-welfarism and capability: The spread of ideas in health economics," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 67(7), pages 1190-1198, October.
    10. McKelvey, Richard D., 1976. "Intransitivities in multidimensional voting models and some implications for agenda control," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 472-482, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. Chris Sampson’s journal round-up for 4th January 2021
      by Chris Sampson in The Academic Health Economists' Blog on 2021-01-04 12:00:05

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Baker, Rachel & Mason, Helen & McHugh, Neil & Donaldson, Cam, 2021. "Public values and plurality in health priority setting: What to do when people disagree and why we should care about reasons as well as choices," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 277(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Schneider, Paul, 2019. "Social tariffs and democratic choice – do population-based health state values reflect the will of the people?," SocArXiv 2qvjb, Center for Open Science.
    2. Mitchell, Paul Mark & Roberts, Tracy E. & Barton, Pelham M. & Coast, Joanna, 2015. "Assessing sufficient capability: A new approach to economic evaluation," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 139(C), pages 71-79.
    3. Coast, Joanna, 2009. "Maximisation in extra-welfarism: A critique of the current position in health economics," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 69(5), pages 786-792, September.
    4. Coast, Joanna & Smith, Richard D. & Lorgelly, Paula, 2008. "Welfarism, extra-welfarism and capability: The spread of ideas in health economics," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 67(7), pages 1190-1198, October.
    5. Al-Janabi, Hareth & Keeley, Thomas & Mitchell, Paul & Coast, Joanna, 2013. "Can capabilities be self-reported? A think aloud study," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 116-122.
    6. Giulia Greco & Paula Lorgelly & Inthira Yamabhai, 2016. "Outcomes in Economic Evaluations of Public Health Interventions in Low‐ and Middle‐Income Countries: Health, Capabilities and Subjective Wellbeing," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(S1), pages 83-94, February.
    7. Wildman, John & McMeekin, Peter & Grieve, Eleanor & Briggs, Andrew, 2016. "Economic evaluation of integrated new technologies for health and social care: Suggestions for policy makers, users and evaluators," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 169(C), pages 141-148.
    8. Kanavos, Panos & Visintin, Erica & Gentilini, Arianna, 2023. "Algorithms and heuristics of health technology assessments: A retrospective analysis of factors associated with HTA outcomes for new drugs across seven OECD countries," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 331(C).
    9. Carmen Herrero & Juan Moreno-Ternero, 2008. "Opportunity analysis of newborn screening programs," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 12(4), pages 259-277, December.
    10. Joanna Coast & Richard Smith & Paula Lorgelly, 2008. "Should the capability approach be applied in Health Economics?," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 17(6), pages 667-670, June.
    11. Stolpe, Michael, 2003. "Ressourcen und Ergebnisse der globalen Gesundheitsökonomie: Einführung und Überblick," Kiel Working Papers 1177, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    12. Mæstad, Ottar & Norheim, Ole Frithjof, 2009. "Eliciting people's preferences for the distribution of health: A procedure for a more precise estimation of distributional weights," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 570-577, May.
    13. Morton, Alec, 2014. "Aversion to health inequalities in healthcare prioritisation: A multicriteria optimisation perspective," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 164-173.
    14. Erik Nord & Jose Luis Pinto & Jeff Richardson & Paul Menzel & Peter Ubel, 1999. "Incorporating societal concerns for fairness in numerical valuations of health programmes," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 8(1), pages 25-39, February.
    15. Philippe Tessier & Josselin Thuilliez, 2018. "Does freedom make a difference?," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 19(8), pages 1189-1205, November.
    16. Engel, Lidia & Bryan, Stirling & Noonan, Vanessa K. & Whitehurst, David G.T., 2018. "Using path analysis to investigate the relationships between standardized instruments that measure health-related quality of life, capability wellbeing and subjective wellbeing: An application in the ," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 213(C), pages 154-164.
    17. Hansen, Lise Desireé & Kjær, Trine, 2019. "Disentangling public preferences for health gains at end-of-life: Further evidence of no support of an end-of-life premium," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 236(C), pages 1-1.
    18. Liz Morrell & Sarah Wordsworth & Sian Rees & Richard Barker, 2017. "Does the Public Prefer Health Gain for Cancer Patients? A Systematic Review of Public Views on Cancer and its Characteristics," PharmacoEconomics, Springer, vol. 35(8), pages 793-804, August.
    19. Bleichrodt, Han & Quiggin, John, 2013. "Capabilities as menus: A non-welfarist basis for QALY evaluation," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 128-137.
    20. Paul Mark Mitchell & Hareth Al-Janabi & Jeff Richardson & Angelo Iezzi & Joanna Coast, 2015. "The Relative Impacts of Disease on Health Status and Capability Wellbeing: A Multi-Country Study," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(12), pages 1-15, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:hlthec:v:30:y:2021:i:1:p:104-112. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/jhome/5749 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.