Healthcare resources are scarce. When resources such as physicians, time, or money are scarce, you are inevitably forced to choose between different ways of spending those resources. If faced with a choice between hiring additional nurses, increasing cancer screening, or approving more drugs, the consequences of your choice are borne by the patients who are denied the healthcare you did not choose. These patients will be sicker: The opportunity cost of healthcare is ultimately not measured in monetary terms, but as the health forgone from these patients.
When health is weighed against money, it is easy to argue that society should pay any price for healthcare. When health is weighed against health, this is significantly more difficult to argue. The issue is particularly salient when it comes to drugs: We need to pay enough for companies to develop new drugs that will yield health tomorrow, but this is done at the expense of those patients who lose out on healthcare today when the limited resources are allocated to drug companies instead. How much should we pay then?
My research lies at the intersection between ethics and health economics, and its purpose is to investigate how much health – not money – is paid to drug companies, how much health these companies generate for society in the form of new drugs, and how different price regulations affect the aggregate health in society. The answers to these questions are essential to developing a healthcare system offering the best possible healthcare on fair terms.
When health is weighed against money, it is easy to argue that society should pay any price for healthcare. When health is weighed against health, this is significantly more difficult to argue. The issue is particularly salient when it comes to drugs: We need to pay enough for companies to develop new drugs that will yield health tomorrow, but this is done at the expense of those patients who lose out on healthcare today when the limited resources are allocated to drug companies instead. How much should we pay then?
My research lies at the intersection between ethics and health economics, and its purpose is to investigate how much health – not money – is paid to drug companies, how much health these companies generate for society in the form of new drugs, and how different price regulations affect the aggregate health in society. The answers to these questions are essential to developing a healthcare system offering the best possible healthcare on fair terms.