THE WAY AROUND HEALTH ECONOMICS DEAD-END

Many leading health economists hold misconceived ideas about central c omponents of their work. In particular, they assume that their methods are in principle value-neutral. This belief is demonstrably false. He alth economic investigations incorporate mainly unexpressed theories o f health. Unless this fact is recognised health economics will shortly reach a conceptual and practical dead end. The way to avoid this dead end is to express implicit theories of health, and explicitly to base philosophically and economically justifiable policy proposals on them .