Pay

My friend VW recently put up a nice description on some elementary principles of health economics (see: http://vwswong.blogspot.com/2009/08/expensive.html).

I shall not pretend to be an expert in this area. Nonetheless, the concept of incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) and the amount of money that people would agree to spend for one quality-adjusted life year (QALY) are actually some deep water that may skip your eyes.

It is dead simple to put it in layman terms: You need this amount of money to achieve that degree of additional benefit. Do you agree ?

The catch is, of course, who is going to pay.

To this very question, surprisingly, the answer of our noble council members, senior health care administrators, as well as many of our colleagues, (knowingly or unknowingly) often hold an unequivocal view: the government should pay - especially for life-saving treatment.

That, opens the Pandora Box.

PS. To have a global perspective, you can replace the word government by insurance companies.