What's your life worth? : health care rationing-- who lives? who dies? who decides? / David Dranove.

Introduction
ch. 1. Is it nice to ration?
Putting a price on your life
The pressure to ration
Cutting to the chase
Rationing drugs down under
The National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE)
The beta-interferon controversy
Medicine versus economics
Endnotes
ch. 2. Defending rationing in principle
Rationing and toy shopping
Are we wasting money on health care?
Moral hazard
The RAND study
Demand inducement
Bad buys in health care
The Weinberg Variations
Defending rationing
Endnotes
ch. 3. Rationing around the world
Rationing in Germany
Controlling drug costs in Germany
If it looks like rationing ...
- Rationing in Canada
The consequences of waiting lists
The future of rationing in Canada
Rationing in England
Rationing elsewhere in the world
Endnotes
ch. 4. Rationing in the U.S. health care marketplace
Rationing through the market mechanism : the uninsured in the United States
Attempts to provide universal coverage
Rationing among insured Americas
Government-sponsored rationing in the United States
A brief history of managed care
Whither rationing in America?
Enough is enough
Endnotes
ch. 5. Doing cost-effectiveness and cost-benefit research
Some background on CEA
Is it valid to use CEA for health care?
Doing CEA/CBA
Measuring costs
Discounting
Is CEA/CBA research valid?
CBA/CEA in practice
Endnotes
ch. 6. Measuring the quality of life
Using rating scales to measure health states
Working with QALYs
Putting QALYs into practice
All QALYs ae equal
Measuring QALYs
How fo your QALY scores measure up?
The quality of well-being (QWB) scale
Concerns about QALYs
Discrimination and QALYs
Limitations of QALY surveys
Summing up CEA/CBA methods
What about the PSA test?
Endnotes
ch. 7. The Oregon Plan
Rationing in Oregon
The story of Coby Howard
Toward a rational rationing plan
The creation of the Oregon Health Plan
The Oregon plan and HMOs
Creating the list
More protests
The dt performance of the rationing plan
Oregon ten years later
Where do we draw the line?
Endnotes
ch. 8. What is your life worth
Willingness to pay, human capital, and intrinsic value
Pricing life in the real world
The cost-of-illness (COI) approach
Using surveys to put a price on good health
Some WTP measures
Willingness to pay for life
How useful are WTP measures?
Statistical versus identified lives
The economic approach to valuing statistical lives
Other evidence on the value of life
What is your life worth?
Value of a QALY
Responding to Mr. Mortimer
The bottom line
Endnotes
ch. 9. Rising costs and rational rationing
The health care budget "crisis"
The drain on the U.S. economy
Targeting technology
The fallacy of cost containment
The steady drumbeat of rational rationing
Can patients be rational?
who should ration
Rational rationing in the public sector
Rational rationing and managed care
The real obstacles
Rational rationing in the 21st century
Endnotes
Index.