IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bsl/wpaper/2018-15.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The value of extending life at its end: Health care allocation in the presence of learning spillovers

Author

Listed:
  • Hintermann, Beat

    (University of Basel)

  • Minke, Matthias

    (University of Basel)

Abstract

We investigate the social value of medical interventions at the end of life that tend to have a high cost-benefit ratio. We model the optimal allocation of health resources across a continuum of diseases that dier by severity and treatment options, and extend it to allow for learning spillovers between treatments. We calibrate our model to admissions to intensive care units in Switzerland. Cancer treatments associated with learning spillovers that decrease the mortality for non-cancer patients by 1 percentage point justify a costbenefit ratio per additional life-year of 1.78.

Suggested Citation

  • Hintermann, Beat & Minke, Matthias, 2018. "The value of extending life at its end: Health care allocation in the presence of learning spillovers," Working papers 2018/15, Faculty of Business and Economics - University of Basel.
    • Handle: RePEc:bsl:wpaper:2018/15
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://edoc.unibas.ch/64725/1/20180618112619_5b277abbcdb0b.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Eric French & Jeremy Mccauley & Maria Aragon & Pieter Bakx & Martin Chalkley & Stacey H. Chen & Bent J. Christensen & Hongwei Chuang & Aurelie Côté-Sergent & Mariacristina de Nardi & Elliott Fan & Dam, 2017. "End-Of-Life Medical Spending In Last Twelve Months Of Life Is Lower Than Previously Reported," Post-Print halshs-01631529, HAL.
    2. Lakdawalla, Darius N. & Sun, Eric C. & Jena, Anupam B. & Reyes, Carolina M. & Goldman, Dana P. & Philipson, Tomas J., 2010. "An economic evaluation of the war on cancer," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(3), pages 333-346, May.
    3. Meltzer, David, 1997. "Accounting for future costs in medical cost-effectiveness analysis," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(1), pages 33-64, February.
    4. David M. Cutler, 2008. "Are We Finally Winning the War on Cancer?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 22(4), pages 3-26, Fall.
    5. David Meltzer, 1997. "Accounting for Future Costs in Medical Cost-Effectiveness Analysis," NBER Working Papers 5946, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Joseph P. Newhouse, 1992. "Medical Care Costs: How Much Welfare Loss?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 6(3), pages 3-21, Summer.
    7. Kuhn, Michael & Wrzaczek, Stefan & Prskawetz, Alexia & Feichtinger, Gustav, 2011. "Externalities in a life cycle model with endogenous survival," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(4-5), pages 627-641.
    8. Ma, Ching-to Albert, 1994. "Health Care Payment Systems: Cost and Quality Incentives," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 3(1), pages 93-112, Spring.
    9. Grossman, Michael, 1972. "On the Concept of Health Capital and the Demand for Health," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 80(2), pages 223-255, March-Apr.
    10. Andrea Baranzini & Giovanni Ferro Luzzi, 2001. "The Economic Value of Risks to Life: Evidence from the Swiss Labour Market," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics (SJES), Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics (SSES), vol. 137(II), pages 149-170, June.
    11. Peter Zweifel & Stefan Felder & Markus Meiers, 1999. "Ageing of population and health care expenditure: a red herring?," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 8(6), pages 485-496, September.
    12. James K. Hammitt, 2007. "Valuing Changes in Mortality Risk: Lives Saved Versus Life Years Saved," Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 1(2), pages 228-240, Summer.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Stefan Felder, 2006. "Lebenserwartung, medizinischer Fortschritt und Gesundheitsausgaben: Theorie und Empirie," Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 7(s1), pages 49-73, May.
    2. Kuhn, Michael & Frankovic, Ivan & Wrzaczek, Stefan, 2017. "Medical Progress, Demand for Health Care, and Economic Performance," VfS Annual Conference 2017 (Vienna): Alternative Structures for Money and Banking 168249, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    3. Felipa de Mello-Sampayo & Sofia de Sousa-Vale, 2014. "Financing Health Care Expenditure in the OECD Countries: Evidence from a Heterogeneous, Cross-Sectional Dependent Panel," Panoeconomicus, Savez ekonomista Vojvodine, Novi Sad, Serbia, vol. 61(2), pages 207-225, March.
    4. Friedrich Breyer & Normann Lorenz & Gerald Pruckner & Thomas Schober, 2021. "Looking into the Black Box of “Medical Progress”: Rising Health Expenditures by Illness Type and Age," CDL Aging, Health, Labor working papers 2021-01, The Christian Doppler (CD) Laboratory Aging, Health, and the Labor Market, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria.
    5. van Baal, P.H. & Feenstra, T.L. & Polder, J.J. & Hoogenveen, R.T. & Brouwer, W., 2011. "Economic evaluation and the postponement of health care costs," Other publications TiSEM ee3d1a20-234a-46d7-8acd-d, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    6. Michael E. Darden & Robert Kaestner, 2022. "Smoking, selection, and medical care expenditures," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 64(3), pages 251-285, June.
    7. David M. Cutler & Ellen Meara, 1998. "The Medical Costs of the Young and Old: A Forty-Year Perspective," NBER Chapters, in: Frontiers in the Economics of Aging, pages 215-246, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Felipa de Mello-Sampayo & Sofia de Sousa-Vale, 2014. "Financing Health Care Expenditure in the OECD Countries: Evidence from a Heterogeneous, Cross-Sectional Dependent Panel," Panoeconomicus, Savez ekonomista Vojvodine, Novi Sad, Serbia, vol. 61(2), pages 207-225.
    9. Howdon, Daniel & Rice, Nigel, 2018. "Health care expenditures, age, proximity to death and morbidity: Implications for an ageing population," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 60-74.
    10. David M. Cutler & Ellen Meara, 2000. "The Technology of Birth: Is It Worth It?," NBER Chapters, in: Frontiers in Health Policy Research, Volume 3, pages 33-68, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Zon, Adriaan van & Muysken, Joan, 2003. "Health as a Principal Determinant of Economic Growth," Research Memorandum 024, Maastricht University, Maastricht Economic Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT).
    12. Amitabh Chandra & Jonathan S. Skinner, 2011. "Technology Growth and Expenditure Growth in Health Care," NBER Working Papers 16953, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. James Hammitt, 2013. "Admissible utility functions for health, longevity, and wealth: integrating monetary and life-year measures," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 47(3), pages 311-325, December.
    14. Norton, E.C., 2016. "Health and Long-Term Care," Handbook of the Economics of Population Aging, in: Piggott, John & Woodland, Alan (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Population Aging, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 0, pages 951-989, Elsevier.
    15. Lakdawalla, Darius N. & Phelps, Charles E., 2020. "Health technology assessment with risk aversion in health," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    16. repec:dau:papers:123456789/7972 is not listed on IDEAS
    17. Frankovic, Ivan & Kuhn, Michael & Wrzaczek, Stefan, 2016. "Medical care within an OLG economy with realistic demography," ECON WPS - Working Papers in Economic Theory and Policy 02/2016, TU Wien, Institute of Statistics and Mathematical Methods in Economics, Economics Research Unit.
    18. Jena, Anupam B. & Philipson, Tomas J., 2008. "Cost-effectiveness analysis and innovation," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(5), pages 1224-1236, September.
    19. Jena, Anupam B. & Philipson, Tomas J., 2013. "Endogenous cost-effectiveness analysis and health care technology adoption," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 172-180.
    20. Cutler, David M., 2007. "The lifetime costs and benefits of medical technology," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(6), pages 1081-1100, December.
    21. Basu, Anirban & Meltzer, David, 2005. "Implications of spillover effects within the family for medical cost-effectiveness analysis," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(4), pages 751-773, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    End of life; allocation of health resources; learning spillovers;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I10 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bsl:wpaper:2018/15. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: WWZ (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/wwzbsch.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.