"As health care costs continue to rise, governments and private payers are being forced to make difficult coverage decisions about new health care treatments. Cost-effectiveness (CE) analysis is the main method used to prioritize this spending. The self-evident efficiency rationale for CE is...

"Medical care at the end of life, which is often is estimated to contribute up to a quarter of US health care spending, often encounters skepticism from payers and policy makers who question its high cost and often minimal health benefits. It seems generally agreed upon that medical resources...

"The NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health provides summaries of publications like this. You can sign up to receive the NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health by email. Public subsidization of technology assessments in general, and Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER) in particular, has received...

"The world-wide and ongoing rise in obesity has generated enormous popular interest and policy concern in developing countries, where it is rapidly becoming the major public health problem facing such nations. As a consequence, there has been a rapidly growing field of economic analysis of the...