Government: cost-effectiveness analysis

Attempts could be made to systematically evaluate the social benefits of linking cost-effectiveness analysis not only with reference pricing, but government controls over industry-level profit and promotional expenditure, price-volume agreements, and competitive tendering. 

A number of approaches exist for calculating and comparing the benefits and costs of a government policy. Cost-effectiveness analysis and cost-benefit analysis are among the most commonly used tools for this kind. Cost-benefit analysis compares a programme s benefits to a stakeholder with the costs to that stakeholder. This approach places benefits and costs in comparable terms, usually dollars. Cost-... 

Any decision to develop other new immunoassays will depend on the success of the three projects still underway. However, we will continue to monitor the development of immunoassays by both other government agencies and by industry to identify tests relevant to our mission. By adapting commercially developed immunoassays as well as funding methods development for specific compounds, we hope to keep our environmental analysis program as efficient and cost-effective as possible. 

Nowadays a drug company has not only to show its paymasters - governments, insurers and so on - that its new prodnct is safe and works, but also that it is cost-effective. In Anstralia, this has been spelled out in legislation. Since 1993, any drng submitted for approval must be accompanied not only by the resnlts of clinical trials bnt also by an economic impact analysis. In 1999, the United Kingdom set np a National Institnte for Clinical Excellence (NICE) to advise the National Health Service on the cost-effectiveness of health care technologies. Other countries ask formally or informally for pharmacoeconomic analysis. Economic impacts can be measured in a variety of ways, for example, cost-effectiveness, cost-utility or full cost-benefit stndies. 

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