EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Regret-sensitive treatment decisions

Yoichiro Fujii () and Yusuke Osaki ()
Additional contact information
Yoichiro Fujii: Osaka Sangyo University
Yusuke Osaki: Waseda University

Health Economics Review, 2018, vol. 8, issue 1, 1-8

Abstract: Abstract The threshold approach to medical decision-making, in which treatment decisions are made based on whether the probability of sickness exceeds a predetermined threshold, was introduced by (Pauker and Kassirer, N Engl J Med 293:229-234, 1975) and (Pauker and Kassirer, N Engl J Med 302:1109-1116, 1980). This study generalizes the threshold approach using regret theory. Regret theory is one of the established alternatives to expected utility theory (EUT), and partly overcomes the descriptive limitations of EUT. Under regret theory, agents suffer disutility from regret or enjoy utility from rejoicing by comparing the chosen alternative with the forgone one. We examine the effect of regret and rejoicing on the threshold approach by setting the EU case as a benchmark, and show conditions under which regret and rejoicing monotonically change the threshold probability. The threshold probability is lowered by regret and rejoicing under the reasonable condition in the sense that the condition can explain observed choices that EU fails to describe. This suggests that agents opt to undergo medical treatment by the feeling of regret and rejoicing. This result might explain the social problems that occur in relation to the public provision of medical services in many OECD countries such as medical expenditure rising faster than government forecasts. The results also imply that regret sensitivity might cause inequality of benefits from public medical services. Finally, we offer a solution to this problem.

Keywords: Medical decision-making; Non-expected utility; Public medical service; Regret and rejoicing; Treatment threshold; D81; I12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1186/s13561-018-0198-2 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:hecrev:v:8:y:2018:i:1:d:10.1186_s13561-018-0198-2

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/13561

DOI: 10.1186/s13561-018-0198-2

Access Statistics for this article

Health Economics Review is currently edited by J. Matthias Graf von der Schulenburg

More articles in Health Economics Review from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-20
Handle: RePEc:spr:hecrev:v:8:y:2018:i:1:d:10.1186_s13561-018-0198-2