OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to explore whether wealth effects of health interventions, including productivity gains and savings in other sectors, are considered in resource allocations by health technology assessment (HTA) agencies and government departments. To analyze reasons for including, or not including, wealth effects. METHODS: Semi-structured interviews with decision makers and academic experts in eight countries (Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, South Korea, Sweden, and the United Kingdom). RESULTS: There is evidence suggesting that health interventions can produce economic gains for patients and national economies. However, we found that the link between health and wealth does not influence decision making in any country with the exception of Sweden. This is due to a combination of factors, including system fragmentation, methodological issues, and the economic recession forcing national governments to focus on short-term measures. CONCLUSIONS: In countries with established HTA processes and methods allowing, in principle, the inclusion of wider effects in exceptional cases or secondary analyses, it might be possible to overcome the methodological and practical barriers and see a more systematic consideration of wealth effect in decision making. This would be consistent with principles of efficient priority setting. Barriers for the consideration of wealth effects in government decision making are more fundamental, due to an enduring separation of budgets within the public sector and current financial pressures. However, governments should consider all relevant effects from public investments, including healthcare, even when benefits can only be captured in the medium- and long-term. This will ensure that resources are allocated where they bring the best returns.
OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to explore whether wealth effects of health interventions, including productivity gains and savings in other sectors, are considered in resource allocations by health technology assessment (HTA) agencies and government departments. To analyze reasons for including, or not including, wealth effects. METHODS: Semi-structured interviews with decision makers and academic experts in eight countries (Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, South Korea, Sweden, and the United Kingdom). RESULTS: There is evidence suggesting that health interventions can produce economic gains for patients and national economies. However, we found that the link between health and wealth does not influence decision making in any country with the exception of Sweden. This is due to a combination of factors, including system fragmentation, methodological issues, and the economic recession forcing national governments to focus on short-term measures. CONCLUSIONS: In countries with established HTA processes and methods allowing, in principle, the inclusion of wider effects in exceptional cases or secondary analyses, it might be possible to overcome the methodological and practical barriers and see a more systematic consideration of wealth effect in decision making. This would be consistent with principles of efficient priority setting. Barriers for the consideration of wealth effects in government decision making are more fundamental, due to an enduring separation of budgets within the public sector and current financial pressures. However, governments should consider all relevant effects from public investments, including healthcare, even when benefits can only be captured in the medium- and long-term. This will ensure that resources are allocated where they bring the best returns.
Traditionally, the primary outcome of health interventions considered by decision makers is
the impact on patients’ health in terms of reduced morbidity or mortality. Additionally,
interventions can generate “wealth effects” (also referred to as indirect costs, nonhealth
benefits, or wider societal effects) which extend beyond the health gains accruing to
patients. Wealth effects include: improvements in the labor productivity of patients and of
their caregivers; cost savings to healthcare, social care, and other sectors; and increases
in national income.In 2003, David Byrne, the then European Commissioner for Health and Consumer Protection,
delivered a speech that focused on the importance of health as a “driver of economic
prosperity” for European Union (EU) Member States (1). There is a growing body of research aimed at demonstrating the interdependencies
between health and wealth (2–4). However, we are not aware of any published studies of whether the
consideration of wealth effects, as defined above, has had an impact on resource allocation
decisions in practice. This study examines the extent to which the link between health and
wealth has influenced national decision making in a sample of eight countries.We focused on three types of decision makers: health technology assessment (HTA) agencies
which make recommendations about the use and/or public reimbursement of health
interventions; Health Ministries that run national health systems and in some cases allocate
resources across separate health system components; and Finance Ministries/Treasuries that
control the budgets of government departments.
CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
We began by developing a categorization of potential wealth effects based on the published
literature. We identified relevant articles by following up the references in recent reviews
and comprehensive analyses of the impact of health on economic growth in high-income
countries, labor productivity and other indirect costs in economic evaluations (5–9). We
identified further publications by conducting searches of Google Scholar using the keywords
and abstract terms from these studies.Figure 1 presents our conceptual framework. It
illustrates that in addition to health effects such as reducing morbidity or mortality
(Figure 1, box A), health interventions can also
produce a variety of wealth effects.
Figure 1.
Conceptual framework of the link between health and economic outcomes.
Conceptual framework of the link between health and economic outcomes.The economic costs of illness often fall on sectors other than the healthcare sector; the
use of health interventions can lead to important cost savings to those sectors (Figure 1, box B). The resources freed up could then be
used to provide additional services within the sector. For example, it has been shown that
one of the key drivers of the cost of Alzheimer's disease (almost 40 percent) is the cost of
social care provided in patients’ homes or in other community settings (10).Despite evidence showing that indirect costs can constitute a significant proportion of the
total cost of illness to society, the inclusion of those costs in economic evaluations
remains limited. Stone et al. (11) found that
productivity costs were considered in less than 10 percent of published cost-utility
analyses.Figure 1 also shows that at the macroeconomic
level, a positive link may exist between the health of a population and the level of
national income (Figure 1, box C). At the
microeconomic level, healthcare interventions can have an impact on individuals or
households by improving patients’ productivity at work (if they are of working age) and by
reducing patients’ and carers’ absences from work due to ill health (Figure 1, box D). The arrow linking macro and micro effects indicates
that some micro effects are captured at the macro level, for example, reducing sickness
absence can improve individual firms’ production which can also contribute to national
income growth. Some effects, however, such as time spent doing unpaid work (e.g.,
housework), tend only to be captured at the micro level.Empirical evidence using a global sample of countries has shown that health, measured in
terms of life expectancy, is a robust predictor of economic growth (12–15). However, the role of
health seems to be stronger in the context of low- and medium-income countries compared with
high-income countries, where evidence is limited and shows mixed results. For example,
Knowles and Owen (16) found that life expectancy
had a minor impact on the economic growth of a sample of high-income countries, while
Bhargava et al. (17) found that above a certain
level of income per capita in high-income countries, improvements in adult survival rates
had a negative impact on growth rates.The results of these types of studies should be interpreted with caution for two reasons.
The first relates to the indicators used to measure population health, which in most studies
is life expectancy or adult mortality. While there is wide variation in life expectancy
between middle- and low-income countries, there is little variation among high-income
countries. As a result, more relevant indicators of health are needed to capture the
different levels of health in different high-income countries (4). An example of this is cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality as
used in a study by Suhrcke and Urban (18). They
show that a 10 percent increase in CVD mortality among OECD countries reduces the per capita
income growth rate by one percentage point. CVD mortality was used as a proxy for health for
two reasons. The first was the large disease burden of noncommunicable diseases in OECD
countries, CVD in particular. The second was the impact on labor productivity, as CVD
affects individuals of working age.The second reason relates to institutional factors that prevent countries from realizing
the positive effects of health improvements. As life expectancy exceeds the retirement age
by a growing margin, the old age dependency ratio increases, thus negatively impacting
government fiscal stability and, indirectly, economic growth. One way to overcome this would
be to increase the retirement age so that the improved health of older people can result in
an increase of labor supply and productivity (19).
Those policies have already been implemented or are under discussion in several countries.The literature also explores the issue of casual effect between health and wealth and shows
that higher income can increase consumption and provision of goods and services promoting
health (6;13). This effect will ultimately reinforce the importance of recognizing the role of
improving health outcomes on national income, which can create a “virtual” cycle between
health and wealth.At the micro-economic level, ill health can affect individuals’ participation in the labor
force in the short-term, long-term or permanently. This affects individuals’ ability to earn
income for themselves and their family, to consume market goods and to engage in leisure
activities. A body of literature estimates what are called “indirect costs” to society due
to ill health. They include losses due to: (i) Reduced productivity at work (presenteeism):
some illnesses, such as back pain and depression (9;20), do not necessarily prevent
individuals from attending work but may affect their on-the-job performance; (ii) Sickness
absence (absenteeism): individuals who are suffering, recovering from illness, or who are
undergoing treatment may require absence from work. For example, it is estimated that a
major component of the cost of breast cancer is due to patients’ absence from work due to
treatment-related symptoms (21); (iii)
Non-employment / early retirement: illnesses that are particularly debilitating may result
in individuals being unable to return to work (and, therefore, unable to produce output) on
a permanent basis. For example, Kobelt (22)
reported that 38 percent of the total cost of multiple sclerosis is due to lost productivity
from early retirement.The effects of ill health also apply to those providing informal (i.e., unpaid) care to
patients (23). For example, when children attend
hospital appointments, their parents often need to be absent from work to take them to their
appointments.
METHODS
We conducted semi-structured interviews with decision makers and academic experts in eight
countries. The aim of the interviews was to explore whether the wealth effects of
interventions identified in our conceptual framework represented in Figure 1 are considered by HTA agencies in their health technology
evaluations, and by government departments in their budget setting decisions. We also asked
about the reasons why these wealth effects were or were not considered. Wealth effects were
defined as nonhealth, economic effects generated by the use of health interventions,
including impacts on labor productivity and supply, and savings to other sectors.The potential interviewees invited to participate included individuals representing one or
more of the three categories of decision makers (HTA agencies, Health Ministries, Finance
Ministries). All were either currently employed by the relevant body or ministry, or local
academic experts directly involved in their country's HTA processes and/or in advising their
country's Ministry of Health.The initial geographical scope included countries with established or emerging HTA systems,
and near universal health coverage: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, South
Korea, Sweden, Turkey, and the United Kingdom (UK). The final list of countries was based on
whether invitees responded to our request for an interview. These were: Australia, France,
Germany, Italy, Poland, South Korea, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.We developed two questionnaires, one to be used for the HTA or reimbursement decision
makers and HTA experts (“Questionnaire for HTA decision makers/experts”; Supplementary Table 1); and the other to be used for the employees
of Health and Finance Ministries who had little or no technical knowledge of HTA
(“Questionnaire for Ministry of Health/Finance/experts”). The questionnaire for HTA decision
makers/experts aimed at exploring whether effects on individuals/households (box D of Figure 1) generated by health interventions matter in
the HTA processes of the interviewee's country; and if they are, which types of effects tend
to be considered, in which diseases areas they are particularly important, what type of
evidence is required to show their impact and what are the key issues encountered.
Hypothetical interventions for three conditions were presented to illustrate those effects:
Alzheimer's disease, breast cancer, and depression. The case studies were developed using
data from recently published cost of illness studies (10;21;24). They focused on drug therapies, because many of the interviewees
(particularly the HTA experts) were more familiar with the evaluation of drugs than of other
types of health intervention, but it was emphasized to all interviewees that we were
interested in the effects of all health interventions. In addition, the final question asked
interviewees about the impact of new health interventions on national income (box C in Figure 1) and whether it mattered in the
decision-making process they had experience of.
Table 1.
Categorization of Countries According to the Extent of Consideration of Wealth
Effects in Resource Allocation Decisions
Australia
France
Germany
Italy
Korea
Poland
Sweden
UK
Considers wealth effects regularly
✓
Considers wealth effects in principle but rarely/never
in practice
✓
✓
✓
Does not consider wealth effects within the HTA
process or healthcare budget-setting decisions
✓
✓
✓
Does not currently consider any economic/cost data
✓
Categorization of Countries According to the Extent of Consideration of Wealth
Effects in Resource Allocation DecisionsThe questionnaire for Ministry of Health/Finance/experts asked interviewees about how any
effects of health interventions on nonhealth public sectors (box B of Figure 1) influence budget setting decisions, for example, whether
resource transfers are possible when benefits from health spending are captured in other
sectors. For the sake of simplicity, this questionnaire included only one case study (the
hypothetical intervention for Alzheimer's disease).Both questionnaires included open-ended questions. This enabled the interviewer to
structure the interview by asking predefined questions, but also to pursue additional topics
in more depth or to probe for information on themes emerging from the interviewers’ answers.
The questionnaires were sent to the interviewees in advance of the hour-long telephone
interview. Two researchers were present at all interviews. Summary notes of the interviews
were sent to the interviewees for confirmation and correction (if necessary) to ensure that
all points made in the discussion were appropriately captured.The finalized notes from the full set of interviews were reviewed by three researchers
(M.G., K.S., and P.S.) who, working independently, summarized the answers in a tabular form,
proposed categorizations of countries based on their consideration of wealth effects, and
grouped common barriers to the inclusion of wealth effects. In particular, based on answers
to two key questions (Are wealth effects mentioned in HTA guidelines/methods guide? Are they
considered by your HTA body in practice?), we developed a categorization of countries
designed to summarize the impact of wealth effects on their decision-making processes. This
categorization is presented in the next section.Results from those analyses were then discussed and validated, and key themes were agreed,
in a group discussion involving all four researchers.
INTERVIEW RESULTS
We interviewed thirteen individuals from eight countries: seven academic experts and six
individuals working (either currently or formerly) for HTA agencies or the Ministries of
Health; two individuals from each country were interviewed, with the exception of France,
Italy, and South Korea. When the experts stated they had a direct experience or extensive
knowledge of the processes of the HTA agencies and/or the Ministries of Health in their
countries, we asked them questions related to those topics (suggesting that the HTA/Health
Ministry perspectives were represented).In two countries (Italy, Poland), a Ministry of Finance perspective was represented as the
interviewees were able to answer the questions about the allocation of resources among
different ministries. In all countries, the Health Ministry and HTA perspectives were
represented.
Do Decision Makers Consider Wealth Effects?
Based on our analysis of the interviewees’ responses (following the approach described in
the methods section), we assigned each country to one of four categories: countries that
consider wealth effects regularly; countries that consider wealth effects in principle but
rarely or never in practice; countries that do not consider wealth effects within HTA; and
countries that apparently do not currently consider any economic or cost data when making
reimbursement and healthcare budget-setting decisions.As shown in Table 1, with the exception of
Sweden, no country considers wealth effects on a regular basis. In Australia, Poland, and
the United Kingdom, although economic evaluations of individual drug interventions
submitted to HTA agencies could include wealth effects as part of a secondary analysis, in
practice this rarely happens. In Germany, Italy, and Poland there is no scope for
including anything other than the direct costs to the healthcare sector and benefits of a
new drug. In France, the HTA agency did not consider economic or cost data at the time of
our analysis.At the Finance Ministry level, our two interviewees (from Poland and Italy) emphasized
that there is reluctance to consider wider effects of health interventions in their
decisions about allocating resources across sectors. Two other interviewees (from the
United Kingdom and Australia) referred to national policy reports emphasizing the
importance of wealth effects (25;26) but noted that these have not resulted in any
specific policy changes to date.
Key Barriers for the Inclusion of Wealth Effects
Our interviews revealed several legislative, evidence, and policy barriers to
incorporating wealth effects into decision making. We have grouped those into the
following themes: (i) System fragmentation, including a persistent culture of silo budgets
whereby interlinks between governmental departments’ expenditures are not considered
regularly if at all and views that the healthcare system should concentrate on health;
(ii) Methodological and data generation issues, such as difficulties in demonstrating with
reliable data the impact of a specific treatment on productivity; (iii) Practical issues
due to added complexity if those effects are included in decision making; (iv) Equity
issues as the inclusion of productivity effects can favor interventions for working-age
individuals; (v) Weakness of evidence on the relationship between health and economic
growth at the macro level which is limited in relation to high-income countries.
System Fragmentation
The general view among decision makers is that the primary and often sole objective of
health care is to improve citizens’ health. Thus healthcare budgets tend to be separate
from budgets for other sectors even when they are closely related, such as social care.
Any spill-overs that occur across sectors are not captured, for example, where spending on
a healthcare intervention leads to lower social care costs that are paid out of a separate
budget.In Australia, Italy, and Poland we found that there are also silo budgets within the
heathcare sector. In Australia for example, hospital and primary care are financed
separately with no scope for transferring any cost savings between the different parts of
the healthcare system.In South Korea, the Government created a separate budget to cover the cost of care for
dementia. However, this budget covers community care but not drug costs, which are funded
by means of the health budget. Any savings that may result from a new dementia drug that
delays the need for community care would, therefore, not be considered in a drug benefit
assessment as they would accrue outside the healthcare sector.In Sweden, even though the HTA body adopts a societal perspective when making
reimbursement recommendations on new medicines (i.e., all relevant costs and benefits
associated with a treatment and illness are considered), individual County Councils can
restrict use of HTA-approved medicines to meet their own budget targets (the key criterion
for their decisions is budget impact) (8).A few examples of integrated decision making, where nonhealth programs recognize health
benefits, were identified (for example, local authority-funded cycle lanes in the United
Kingdom). However, our interviewees could not identify any cases where nonhealth benefits
of medicine-based interventions were taken into account when allocating resources to the
healthcare sector or more specifically to the budget for pharmaceuticals.
Methodological and Data Generation Issues
When incorporating wealth effects in economic evaluation, there are methodological issues
around measuring, and providing evidence of, productivity effects. First, there is no
methodology to disaggregate productivity gains and improvements in quality of life
measured by the quality-adjusted life-years (QALY). Are changes in the individuals’
ability to earn income reflected in the QALY? If they are, there is a potential for double
counting those effects.Second, even when productivity effects are included in the cost-effectiveness estimation
of drug interventions (as indirect costs), HTA bodies require evidence showing
productivity effects which are directly attributable to the intervention, which is rarely
available. For example, what is the proportion of patients that return to work due to the
treatment?In addition, it was noted that short-term absences from work do not necessarily lead to
significant losses for the firm employing the patient as the returning employee might
catch up on her/his work and be more productive.Those concerns were highlighted by interviewees from Australia and the United Kingdom,
where the HTA process rely on cost-effectiveness evidence. In Sweden, where wealth effects
are considered on a regular basis, an interviewee raised concerns about the poor quality
of the studies showing productivity benefits underpinning recent submissions to the HTA
body. The reason identified was that other HTA bodies such as NICE do not ask for this
evidence, hence it is not a priority for companies to collect it. Overall, it emerged
that, if HTA bodies were to consider productivity effects and other wealth effects of
health interventions, including savings falling to other public sectors, then robust data
showing those effects would be demanded.The interviewees from Poland and South Korea discussed the issue of transferability of
the data on indirect effects across countries, as evidence collected in the United Kingdom
or Sweden, for example, may not be applicable to them. Therefore, the lack of
country-specific data was identified as a barrier to the incorporation of indirect costs
in their HTA decisions.
Practical Issues
Some interviewees were skeptical of the impact that wealth effects, particularly
productivity gains, can have on final decisions. As one interviewee stated, indirect costs
are unlikely to be “the factor that tips the scale in favor of a treatment or not.”Furthermore, adopting a wider perspective in economic evaluations would result in more
work for HTA agencies and for the manufacturers collecting the evidence. Many of our
interviewees questioned whether the inclusion of these wealth effects was worth the
additional cost and effort.In some countries, there are legislative barriers to taking wealth effects into
consideration when evaluating health interventions. For example, the National Institute
for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) in the United Kingdom has until recently been
required to adopt a narrow, healthcare sector perspective as specified in the legislation
that defined its remit. The new legislation. Public health is already an exception, partly
because many of the actions recommended in public health guidance relate to actors outside
the health sector. This is reflected in NICE's public health activities where the
Institute is more open to reflecting costs and benefits to other sectors. Similarly, in
Poland the objective of the healthcare system is defined by law to be to improve the
health of the Polish population with no mention of other nonhealth
gains. Finally, German decision makers are guided by the statutory Social Code Book
regulations, according to which drug benefit assessments should be based on patient
relevant benefits identified using clinical endpoints.
Equity Issues
Including indirect effects in the assessment of health interventions can have
distributive effects between different social groups. For example, including productivity
effects will favor treatments aimed at working age individuals over those who are unable
to work because of permanent disabilities, older/retired individuals (who tend to consume
more resources than they produce, although they may have been net producers in the past),
and children (who may eventually become net producers, but effects accruing over a life
time are difficult to estimate). Importantly, this could result in situations where
treatments which extend the lives of the older patients for a certain period of time will
be found to be less cost-effective than treatments that extend the lives of working age
patients for the same amount of time.Interviewees from Australia and the United Kingdom had particularly strong concerns
around the fact that including productivity effects of health interventions conflicted
with the principles of equity and nondiscrimination that their health systems were founded
upon. Some of the disadvantaged groups are already among the worst-off in society, so any
reprioritization of resources away from them could be deemed to be inequitable.This is in contrast with the approach in Sweden, which is the only country considering
wealth effects on a regular basis, despite the fact that it is not an insurance-based
system where, arguably, interventions increasing people's ability to work would be favored
by employers contributing to insurance funds.
Weakness of Evidence on Health Impact on Economic Growth
We asked all interviewees whether the Suhrcke and Urban (18) study, which provides evidence on the impact of improved health
outcomes in CVD on macroeconomic growth, had had any resonance in their country. Almost
all interviewees said that the study, which was commissioned by the European Commission
(4), has not had any impact on their national
policy.There are reservations about applying the Suhrcke and Urban results to inform resource
allocation decisions. One issue identified was that the focus of the study is on one
disease area, although one with the largest burden in high-income countries. Therefore,
the results do not necessarily support investment in healthcare generally as a means to
promote economic growth. In addition, the results cannot be used to inform priority
setting within the health sector as evidence on the impact of other disease areas on
macroeconomic indicators is not available.A few interviewees questioned the validity of these studies, especially in light of
documented methodological limitations (7). Only
in the United Kingdom, according to one of the interviewees, was the Suhrcke and Urban
(18) study discussed by a decision-making
committee; however, this was primarily for public health interventions.
DISCUSSION
The barriers to the incorporation of wealth effects in decision making identified by our
interviewees could be addressed in several ways. Breaking down silo budgeting may be
difficult, as this will require not only a change in the operation of government financial
systems to allow for resource transfers across departments, but also potentially the need to
develop more integrated healthcare systems focusing on outcomes that go beyond health gains.On the other hand, methodological issues can be addressed in the short term by undertaking
research comparing the available approaches (e.g., friction cost approach, human capital
approach) to estimating productivity gains and assess their validity in different economic
contexts. In addition, empirical studies can be conducted to test the extent to which
effects of changes in individuals’ income are captured by the QALY such as the study by
Tilling et al. (27). This will give HTA bodies
more confidence in considering wealth effects systematically.A clear signal from HTA bodies to a more open approach to the consideration of wealth
effects will encourage bio-pharmaceutical companies to invest in generating the evidence
needed to demonstrate the presence and the size of those effects for specific treatments. In
particular, for each category of wealth effect, including productivity, there is a need to
identify the type of studies that can be undertaken and approach to incorporate this
evidence in HTA submissions. If HTA remains ambivalent regarding the importance of wealth
effects, companies are unlikely to generate good quality evidence to prove them. The UK
Department of Health and NICE recently proposed introducing a new, value-based pricing
system for pharmaceuticals (28), based on the
recognition that the value of a medicine should capture all benefits to society beyond
health. Though the proposal was ultimately rejected, it demonstrates that UK decision makers
have at least considered the feasibility of incorporating a broader range of non-health
effects in assessment processes.Equity concerns should be considered in light of certain indirect effects of interventions.
Taking into account productivity benefits could result in favoring treatments for diseases
affecting individuals of working age. However, all members of society could potentially
benefit from keeping people at work if the increased tax revenues are redistributed across
different groups (e.g., by means of investment in public services). Furthermore, the
improved health of nonworking individuals can also have positive effects on the economy by
allowing their (informal) carers to remain in work and maintain their labor supply. This may
be particularly true for quality of life-improving treatments for nonworking patients with
chronic conditions, whose need for caregiving falls as a result of treatment.The issue of uncertain results on the link between health and economic growth in
high-income countries does not justify moving resources away from the health sector. From a
methodological perspective, more research can be done entailing, for example, the use of
health indicators other than life expectancy to better reflect variation of health states in
rich countries and also the application of the Suhrcke and Urban (18) approach to different disease areas. From a national governments
perspective, there is an opportunity to expand taxable income when funding interventions
that increase patients’ ability to work and earn income, and, therefore, to set a virtuous
cycle of “better health—more income for citizens—more taxable income for governments,” which
could increase the total resources available and partly help dealing with public
deficits.
STUDY LIMITATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH
Our qualitative analysis was based on a relatively small number of interviews (one or two
in each country) conducted by telephone. This was sufficient for us to identify common
issues preventing countries from considering all relevant effects of healthcare spending,
including positive economic spill-overs. A larger sample, however, would have allowed us to
compare a greater number of views and to validate some of the claims being made. Further
analyses could include more countries with emerging HTA systems and growing economies (such
as Brazil) and new EU Member States facing budgetary pressures, to investigate whether and
how health could be considered a long-term investment. In terms of methodology, qualitative
approaches other than interviews could be used, such as focus groups or workshops allowing
participants to interact with one another and to make recommendations following a period of
discussion and deliberation.
CONCLUSIONS
There is evidence suggesting that, in certain diseases areas, health interventions can
produce economic gains for patients and national economies (9;18;22;23). Those benefits
include improvements in the productivity of patients and their carers at work, and cost
savings to other sectors such as education and social care.Despite this evidence, the results from our interviews with decision makers and expert
commentators in eight countries suggest that, with the exception of Sweden, considerations
of the link between health and wealth have little to no impact on decision making, from
budget setting across ministries to reimbursement decisions on individual therapies.In countries with established HTA processes and methods guides that in principle allow the
inclusion of wider effects in exceptional cases or secondary analyses (Australia, Poland,
and the United Kingdom in our study), it might be possible to overcome some of the
methodological and practical barriers identified and move toward a more systematic
consideration of wealth effects in drug decision making. The United Kingdom, for example,
considered this option when developing a proposal for value-based assessment (28). Ultimately, considering all relevant elements,
including both health and wealth effects, is consistent with principles of efficient
priority setting and does not necessarily require increasing the healthcare budget.As far as national government decisions are concerned, barriers to the consideration of
wealth effects in decision making and investment assessments are more fundamental due to an
enduring separation of budgets within the public sector (and in some cases within the health
sector) which prevents the capture of spill-overs across areas. In addition, given current
financial pressures, it seems unlikely that governments will be willing to shift their focus
away from cost-cutting measures aimed at reducing fiscal deficits in the short term toward
public investments, including in healthcare, with longer-term benefits. Governments should
not, however, overlook how to make the best use of the available resources and should
consider all relevant effects, whether positive or negative, when making resource allocation
decisions. In difficult economic times it becomes even more important to use resources where
they bring the best returns to the economy.For supplementary material accompanying this paper visit http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0266462315000616.click here to view supplementary material
CONFLICTS OF INTEREST
The work on this paper conducted by Martina Garau, Koonal Shah, Priya Sharma, and Adrian
Towse was funded by Eli Lilly and Company. The authors have no other relevant affiliations
or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or
financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript.
Authors: Carl Tilling; Marieke Krol; Aki Tsuchiya; John Brazier; Job van Exel; Werner Brouwer Journal: Pharmacoeconomics Date: 2012-01 Impact factor: 4.981
Authors: Edward Kwabena Ameyaw; Linus Baatiema; Bright Opoku Ahinkorah; Abdul-Aziz Seidu; Jerry Paul Ninnoni; John Kuumuori Ganle Journal: BMC Public Health Date: 2021-12-11 Impact factor: 3.295