Does Willingness to Pay per Quality-Adjusted Life Year Bring Us Closer to a Useful Decision Rule for Cost-Effectiveness Analysis?

Willingness to Pay per Quality-Adjusted Life Year: Is One Threshold Enough for Decision-Making?

“…Disregarding the controversies over underlying theoretical and methodological issues, 8,11 the wide variance of WTP/QALY values 10 would currently make it difficult in informing decision making. However, empirical researches based on the preference of public or patients themselves are essential to learn the public expectation, because "value for money" assessment should be judged according to the extent that satisfies public expectations.…”

“…4 However, controversies still remain about the validity of this suggested threshold. 3,5,6 To increase the acceptability of existed decision rule and provide evidences for threshold setting, more empirical researches are urgently needed, 7,8 particularly in Asia.…”

“…6,10 Besides the effect of context difference and varied study design, QALY type was suggested as the most likely explanation of variations as preference for avoiding the risk of death and improving health-related quality of life (HRQoL) would not be the same. 10 Although to value QALY with WTP approach remains controversial, 8,11 WTP/QALY values reflect the public preference and definitely provide empirical evidence for setting threshold.…”

What Does the Value of Modern Medicine Say About the $50,000 per Quality-Adjusted Life-Year Decision Rule?

“…1 Because more sophisticated interpretation methods 2 are complex and require data that are commonly unavailable, simple decision rules, such as $50,000 per QALY, 3 or 3 times the gross domestic product per disability-adjusted life-year, 4 are invoked regularly. However, these simple decision rules have little theoretical or empirical grounding, [5][6][7][8] and have not been updated regularly.…”

Economic Perspectives on Personalized Health Care and Prevention

“…It can be used in cost-benefit analyses, but few of these are done. There have been attempts to better define how willingness-to-pay can be used in CEAs, but this remains a challenge (Polsky 2005).…”