Towards cost-value analysis in health care?

By describing societal value judgements in health care in numerical terms one may in theory increase the precision of guidelines for priority setting and allow decision makers to judge more accurately the degree to which different health care programs provide societal value for money. However, valuing health programs in terms of QALYs disregards salient societal concerns for fairness in resource allocation. A different kind of numerical valuation of medical interventions, that incorporates concerns for fairness, is described. The usefulness to decision makers of such numerical information remains to be tested.