Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Public Values for Health States Versus Societal Valuations of Health Improvements: A Critique of Dan Hausman’s ‘Valuing Health’

Public Values for Health States Versus Societal Valuations of Health Improvements: A Critique of... AbstractDaniel Hausman’s book ‘Valuing Health’ is a valuable contribution to our understanding of QALYs and DALYs and to moving health economics to adopting a broader perspective than that taken in conventional cost-effectiveness analysis. Hausman’s attempt at constructing a public value table for health states without having recourse to data from population preferences studies is also a fascinating read. But I have serious concerns about his resulting table. Hausman’s views on which dimensions of health a benevolent liberal state should care about are essentially not different from what has long been emphasized in health economists’ work on valuations of health outcomes. His table would have been helpful as a sketch if it was the first attempt in health economics to quantify numerically the societal value of different types and degrees of health improvement. But research in the field has gone far beyond that. Multi-attribute utility instruments with much more accurate health classification systems than Hausman’s sketch are now at hand. Available also are models of societal valuations of QALYs that (i) are broadly consistent with general population values, (ii) incorporate wider concerns than Hausman’s table does and (iii) do not have the questionable numerical properties that characterize Hausman’s sketch. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Public Health Ethics Oxford University Press

Public Values for Health States Versus Societal Valuations of Health Improvements: A Critique of Dan Hausman’s ‘Valuing Health’

Nord, Erik
Public Health Ethics , Volume 10 (2) – Jul 1, 2017
Download PDF
10 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/oxford-university-press/public-values-for-health-states-versus-societal-valuations-of-health-kmhmCFvR4G

References (24)

Publisher
Oxford University Press
Copyright
© The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press. Available online at www.phe.oxfordjournals.org
ISSN
1754-9973
eISSN
1754-9981
DOI
10.1093/phe/phw008
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

AbstractDaniel Hausman’s book ‘Valuing Health’ is a valuable contribution to our understanding of QALYs and DALYs and to moving health economics to adopting a broader perspective than that taken in conventional cost-effectiveness analysis. Hausman’s attempt at constructing a public value table for health states without having recourse to data from population preferences studies is also a fascinating read. But I have serious concerns about his resulting table. Hausman’s views on which dimensions of health a benevolent liberal state should care about are essentially not different from what has long been emphasized in health economists’ work on valuations of health outcomes. His table would have been helpful as a sketch if it was the first attempt in health economics to quantify numerically the societal value of different types and degrees of health improvement. But research in the field has gone far beyond that. Multi-attribute utility instruments with much more accurate health classification systems than Hausman’s sketch are now at hand. Available also are models of societal valuations of QALYs that (i) are broadly consistent with general population values, (ii) incorporate wider concerns than Hausman’s table does and (iii) do not have the questionable numerical properties that characterize Hausman’s sketch.

Journal

Public Health Ethics – Oxford University Press

Published: Jul 1, 2017

There are no references for this article.