Abstract

The bottom line is that Claxton and Culyer believe, and are on record as saying, that a therapy or procedure is not cost effective if “the health benefits that it is estimated could be gained from the technology are less than those estimated to be forgone by other patients as other procedures are necessarily curtailed or not undertaken. It is this comparison of health gained and health forgone that is at the heart of the rationale of cost-effectiveness analysis”. To estimate whether the gains made …