The analysis supports the hypothesis that the potential for cost effectiveness of new therapies is dependent on factors specific to each disease area and furthermore to sub-populations within disease areas. Despite a clinical need still existing, the results suggest that no more technologies are...

Limited healthcare budgets result in payers adopting policies at national, regional or local level to achieve allocative efficiency in drug spending. Some of these aim at creating a link between pharmaceutical prices and the value they provide by setting a cost effectiveness (CE) threshold as...

In this study we test the impact of competition and other market attributes on the pricing of pharmaceuticals. Three decades worth of market and pricing data were collected and the market for lipid-lowering agents used as a case study. Panel data and cross sectional methods were applied to...

In this paper the role of the social sciences in health policy and practice is analysed. The analysis focuses on the disciplines of medical sociology and health economics. The authors attempt to describe the contribution of each of the two disciplines to health policy and health practice,...

This article discusses the role of economic appraisal in insurance based health care systems, taking the case of the Netherlands as an example. The public health insurance system in this country is governed by the Health Insurance Executive Board, which policies are firmly based on the results...

This volume presents the results of research which represent a significant contribution to the knowledge of equity in the finance and delivery of health care in ten countries. It compares the experience of nine European countries and the US using a consistent methodology to draw out comparable...

Given the reasonable support for their validity and practical meaningfulness, the estimates derived while correcting for probability weighting may provide valuable input for the debate on the consumption value of health. While decision makers should not apply these estimates without further...