The Economics of Resource Allocation in Health Care

The question of how to allocate scarce medical resources has become an important public policy issue in recent decades. Cost-utility analysis is the most commonly used method for determining the allocation of these resources, but this book counters the argument that overcoming its inherent imbalances is simply a question of implementing methodological changes. The Economics of Resource Allocation in Health Care represents the first comprehensive analysis of equity weighting in health care resource allocation that offers a fundamental critique of its basic framework. It offers a critique of health economics, putting the discourse on economic evaluation into its broader socio-political context. Such an approach broadens the debate on fairness in health economics and ties it in with deeper-rooted problems in moral philosophy. Ultimately, this interdisciplinary study calls for the adoption of a fundamentally different paradigm to address the distribution of scarce medical resources. This book will be of interest to policy makers, health care professionals, and post-graduate students looking to broaden their understanding of the economics of the health care system.

Andrea Klonschinski is a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Kiel.

1. Introduction 2. The Utility Concept in Economics: From Pleasure Maximization to Rational Choice 3. On the Rise, Rationale, and Authority of Economic Evaluation 4. The Empirical Failure of CUA and the Approach of Equity Weighting 5. Values, Weights, and Trade-Offs: The Economic Conception of Choice 6. Inconsistencies in the Determination and Measurement of Social Values 7. On the Normative Status of Empirically Elicited Prioritization Preferences 8. Conclusion