Willingness to pay for publicly-provided goods. A possible measure of benefit?
The results presented in this paper arise from a U.K.-based study aimed at determining peoples' willingness to pay for two publicly-provided goods, namely continuing-care for elderly people in either hospital or National Health Service (NHS) nursing homes. Seventy-one per cent of respondents provided evaluations which could contribute to the analysis which showed that the group which preferred NHS nursing-home care could potentially compensate the group which preferred hospital care and still remain better off, thus rendering NHS nursing-home care the efficient option to undertake. No variable could be found which discriminated between those who could place a value on both types of care and those who could not. The willingness-to-pay methodology is very experimental in this context and should be investigated thoroughly before its widespread adoption in the evaluation of health care techniques.
Donaldson
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C
University of Sydney, Australia.
D000368:Aged; D001294:Attitude to Health; D003256:Community Participation / Q000191:economics*; D003362:Cost-Benefit Analysis / Q000379:methods; D003625:Data Collection; D005069:Evaluation Studies as Topic; D005190:Family / Q000523:psychology*; D005380:Financing, Government / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D005382:Financing, Personal / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006760:Hospitalization / Q000191:economics*; D006801:Humans; D015233:Models, Statistical; D009735:Nursing Homes / Q000191:economics*; D013222:State Medicine; D006113:United Kingdom