Journal of health economics
-
In economic evaluations of health treatments, the sensitivity of a cost-benefit (CB), cost-effectiveness (CE) or cost-utility (CU) analysis to changes in modeling assumptions, variation in data, and sampling error is important. The typical approach to this problem is ad hoc experimentation; namely, a few parameters of particular interest are changed, either separately or in combination, over plausible ranges. ⋯ This note suggests a systematic approach to sensitivity analysis. Bootstrap sampling is used to determine to what extent the patients' response to treatment and economic consequences might vary due to many replications of a clinical trial.
-
The measurement unit disability-adjusted life years (DALYs), used in recent years to quantify the burden of diseases, injuries and risk factors on human populations, is grounded on cogent economic and ethical principles and can guide policies toward delivering more cost-effective and equitable health care. DALYs follow from a fairness principle that treats 'like as like' within an information set comprising the health conditions of individuals, differentiated solely by age and sex. The particular health state weights used to account for non-fatal health outcomes are derived through the application of various forms of the person trade-off.