'The Value of Health: Why Current Measurements Are Wrong and How They Can Be Improved'
Date: Tuesday 10th November 2009
Time: 6.30-7.30pm
Venue: Hong Kong Theatre, Clement House, Aldwych. Followed by a reception at the Senior Common Room, 5th Floor, Main Building, Houghton Street
Speaker: Professor Han Bleichrodt, Erasmus University Rotterdam
Chair: Professor Alistair McGuire, Head of Department of Social Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science
Respondent: Professor Paul Dolan
Professor Han Bleichrodt presents the 6th Merck Foundation Lecture 2009, subtitled "The Value of Health: Why Current Measurements Are Wrong and How They Can Be Improved."
Recently the Council for Public Health and Health Care, the main advisory body of the Dutch government on health policy, recommended that only treatments costing less than € 80,000 to let a patient live an extra year in good health should be reimbursed. The lecture explains that this recommendation is sensible. Criticism that the recommendation is merely a cost-cutting device or that human life is priceless is unwarranted. Unfortunately, the current methods of health economics are unreliable and underestimate the burden of impaired health. The lecture shows how we can improve our methods and reliably value health by applying recent insights from psychology. These improvements can be obtained free of charge: no extra data need to be collected.
PDF Lecture slides|
Link to podcast|
Han Bleichrodt (1965) is Professor of Health Economics at the Erasmus School of Economics, Erasmus University Rotterdam. His research focuses on decision making, in particular how people value their health.
