Theory versus practice: A review of 'willingness-to-pay' in health and health care

This paper is based upon an extensive review of 71 willingness-to-pay (WTP) surveys of health and health care published in English during the period 1 985-1998. The aim of the paper is to outline the arguments advanced for the superiority of WTP over quality-adjusted-life-years (QALYs) as a measure o f benefit of health care programmes, and to review how empirical WTP studie s adhere to their implications. An important argument is that WTP enables a more comprehensive valuation of benefits than QALYs. Our main focus is the refore to provide a careful review of the scenario descriptions used in the surveys, according to which types of benefits are being valued, and how co mprehensively the descriptions are presented. Furthermore, the 'cost-benefi t argument', that WTP can assist in improving social efficiency, is discuss ed before we inquire into the extent to which the studies actually compare WTP with social costs. Copyright (C) 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.