IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/5946.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Accounting for Future Costs in Medical Cost-Effectiveness Analysis

Author

Listed:
  • David Meltzer

Abstract

Most medical cost-effectiveness analyses include future costs only for related illnesses but this approach is controversial. This paper demonstrates that cost-effectiveness analysis is consistent with lifetime utility maximization only if it includes all future medical and non-medical expenditures. Estimates of the magnitude of these future costs suggest that they may substantially alter both the absolute and relative cost-effectiveness of medical interventions intervention increases length of life more than quality of life. In older populations, current methods overstate the cost-effectiveness of interventions which extend life compared to" interventions which improve the quality of life.

Suggested Citation

  • David Meltzer, 1997. "Accounting for Future Costs in Medical Cost-Effectiveness Analysis," NBER Working Papers 5946, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:5946
    Note: EH PR
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w5946.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Loomes, Graham & McKenzie, Lynda, 1989. "The use of QALYs in health care decision making," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 299-308, January.
    2. Prescott, Edward C & Townsend, Robert M, 1984. "General Competitive Analysis in an Economy with Private Information," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 25(1), pages 1-20, February.
    3. Hansen, Gary D., 1985. "Indivisible labor and the business cycle," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(3), pages 309-327, November.
    4. Wagstaff, Adam, 1991. "QALYs and the equity-efficiency trade-off," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 21-41, May.
    5. Alan M. Garber & Charles E. Phelps, 1992. "Economic Foundations of Cost Effective Analysis," NBER Working Papers 4164, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Joseph P. Newhouse, 1992. "Medical Care Costs: How Much Welfare Loss?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 6(3), pages 3-21, Summer.
    7. Magnus Johannesson & David Meltzer & Richard M. O'Conor, 1997. "Incorporating Future Costs in Medical Cost-Effectiveness Analysis," Medical Decision Making, , vol. 17(4), pages 382-389, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Meltzer, David, 1997. "Accounting for future costs in medical cost-effectiveness analysis," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(1), pages 33-64, February.
    2. Hougaard, Jens Leth & Moreno-Ternero, Juan D. & Østerdal, Lars Peter, 2013. "A new axiomatic approach to the evaluation of population health," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 515-523.
    3. Garratt, Rod & Keister, Todd & Qin, Cheng-Zhong & Shell, Karl, 2002. "Equilibrium Prices When the Sunspot Variable Is Continuous," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 107(1), pages 11-38, November.
    4. Bleichrodt, Han, 1997. "Health utility indices and equity considerations," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(1), pages 65-91, February.
    5. Brian Nolan, 1994. "Affordability versus Quality, Effectiveness and Equity in Health Care: Is there a Trade-Off?," Papers WP055, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI).
    6. Nikolaos Kokonas & Paulo Santos Monteiro, 2023. "Self-fulfilling labor wedge fluctuations and unemployment insurance," Discussion Papers 2313, Centre for Macroeconomics (CFM).
    7. Edward C. Prescott, 2003. "Non-convexities in quantitative general equilibrium studies of business cycles," Staff Report 312, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    8. Prescott, Edward C. & Shell, Karl, 2002. "Introduction to Sunspots and Lotteries," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 107(1), pages 1-10, November.
    9. Kilenthong, Weerachart & Townsend, Robert, 2007. "Market Based, Segregated Exchanges with Default Risk," MPRA Paper 20724, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 12 Nov 2009.
    10. Kehoe, Timothy J. & Levine, David K. & Prescott, Edward C., 2002. "Lotteries, Sunspots, and Incentive Constraints," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 107(1), pages 39-69, November.
    11. Michael A. Sadler, 2000. "Escaping Poverty: Risk-Taking and Endogenous Inequality in a Model of Equilibrium Growth," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 3(4), pages 704-725, October.
    12. Edward C. Prescott, 2006. "Nobel Lecture: The Transformation of Macroeconomic Policy and Research," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 114(2), pages 203-235, April.
    13. Prescott, Edward C. & Rios-Rull, Jose-Victor, 1992. "Classical competitive analysis of economies with Islands," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 57(1), pages 73-98.
    14. Mark Blaug, 1998. "Where are we now in British health economics?," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 7(S1), pages 63-78, August.
    15. Ried, Walter, 1998. "QALYs versus HYEs--what's right and what's wrong. A review of the controversy," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(5), pages 607-625, October.
    16. Nikolaos Kokonas & Paulo Santos Monteiro, 2020. "The Ins and Outs of Unemployment in General Equilibrium," Discussion Papers 2014, Centre for Macroeconomics (CFM).
    17. Andreas Hornstein & Edward C. Prescott, 1989. "The firm and the plant in general equilibrium theory," Staff Report 126, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    18. Cam Donaldson & Stephen Birch & Amiram Gafni, 2002. "The distribution problem in economic evaluation: income and the valuation of costs and consequences of health care programmes," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 11(1), pages 55-70, January.
    19. Terry J. Fitzgerald, 1998. "Reducing working hours: a general equilibrium analysis," Working Papers (Old Series) 9801, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
    20. Kokonas, Nikolaos & Monteiro, Paulo Santos, 2021. "Aggregation in economies with search frictions," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(C).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
    • D61 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Allocative Efficiency; Cost-Benefit Analysis

    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:nbr:nberwo:5946. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    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.