ABSTRACT
The economist in the health sector rests his case on the unquestionable ground that more health is preferable to less; all health sector resource allocations involve choice, and there is an imperative to make sure that health impacts from the available resources are as large as possible. The quality-adjusted life year work by no means resolves the problems in the way of an acceptable system of health sector resource allocation, but it makes an essential beginning. The attempt by the Analysis of the Scientific and Technical Evaluation of Health Interventions project to assess the extent of health evaluation in Europe could be described as ambitious, though the use of pharmacoeconomic guidelines might have been expected to produce systematic evidence and inter-counfry comparisons, so that definite conclusions about the cost-effectiveness of different drugs could be reached.
