The comparison of scaling methods used to value health states sometimes rests upon an analysis of aggregate scores. This analysis is usually undertaken once "inconsistent' respondents have been excluded from the data. However, it is important to be able to judge the extent to which respondents...

Chronically ill and disabled patients generally rate the value of their lives in a given health state more highly than do hypothetical patients imagining themselves to be in such states. Much of this difference may be due to actual patients' adaptation to their health states, a phenomenon that...

This paper provides an introduction to a collection of articles concerning the relevance of Amartya Sen's work, the capability approach and related ethical claims, to health-care rationing.

This paper discusses the moral relevance of accounting for various personal characteristics when prioritising between groups of patients. After a review of the results from empirical studies, we discuss the ethical reasons which might explain--and justify--the views expressed in these studies....

Policy makers seeking to enhance well-being are faced with a choice of possible measures that may offer contrasting views about how well an individual's life is going. We suggest that choice of well-being measure should be based on three general criteria: (1) the measure must be conceptually...

An important consideration when establishing priorities in health care is the likely effects that alternative allocations of resources will have on health-related quality of life (HRQoL). This paper reports on the analysis of data from a study which elicited health state valuations (using the...

Objectives To describe the views of health care decision-makers and providers operating in the UK National Health Service (NHS) concerning the concepts of cost-effectiveness, equity and access through a series of attitudinal questions; to evaluate the preferences of health care providers in...