A review of relevant literature within health economics, psychology and moral philosophy suggests that people want resource allocation decisions in health to be informed by considerations of equity as well as efficiency. A number of empirical studies demonstrate that people are willing to...

Objective: to measure a health-related quality of life in a way that reflects salient features of health as perceived by a representative sample of the adult population of the UK. Choosing a descriptive system: with data from a survey of 600 people in the West Midlands, we appraised 6 existing...

Priority setting reflects ideology, and so, more surprisingly, does the quest for “efficiency”. A great deal of the current debate about alternative methods of finance and about reform of management structures, in health services all over the world, purports to be about some notion of...

In evolutionary physiology the human body is viewed as a resource allocation mechanism working according to a predetermined set of priorities to maximise reproductive capacity. In health economics, people are viewed as having a portfolio of assets (health; wealth; and wisdom) which they manage...

The methodology of valuing health states remains a key issue in the construction of health-related quality of life measures. Different scaling methods appear to yield different sets of valuations, and as yet there is no consensus as to which method is the preferred technique. Many of the...

The need for priority setting in health care systems has forced us to think more carefully about objectives and opportunity costs. If our objective is the maximisation of the health of the community, for this to be an effective guide to action we have to find some practical way of describing and...