A Pharmaceutical Innovation � Is it Worth the Money? Whose Money?

Michele Sennhauser () and Peter Zweifel ()
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Michele Sennhauser: Socioeconomic Institute, University of Zurich
Peter Zweifel: Socioeconomic Institute, University of Zurich

No 914, SOI - Working Papers from Socioeconomic Institute - University of Zurich

Abstract: This study seeks to provide evidence for deciding whether or not a pharmaceutical innovation should be included in the benefit list of social health insurance. A discrete choice experiment (DCE) was conducted in Germany to measure preferences for modern insulin therapy. Of the 1,100 individuals interviewed in 2007, 200 suffered from type 1 diabetes, 150 from insulin-treated type 2 diabetes, and 150 from insulin-naive type 2 diabetes. The long-acting insulin analogue �Insulin Detemir� is compared to human insulin as the status quo. The DCE contains two price attributes, copayment and increased contributions to health insurance. As one would expect, non-affected non-diabetics and insulin-naive diabetics exhibit higher willingness-to-pay (WTP) values through copayment (adjusted for probability of contracting diabetes), while affected type 1 and insulin-treated type 2 diabetics have higher WTP through increased contributions. However, WTP values exceed the extra treatment cost in both financing alternatives, justifying inclusion of the innovation in the benefit list from a cost-benefit point of view.

Keywords: Health insurance; discrete-choice experiment; preferences; diabetes (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H51 I11 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 27 pages
Date: 2009-09, Revised 2010-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dcm, nep-hea and nep-ias
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https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/51783/1/wp0914.pdf revised version, 2010 (application/pdf)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:soz:wpaper:0914

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