Cost-effectiveness of health interventions may be perpetuating health disparities. Here’s how to fix that

By Sanjay Basu

In a peer-reviewed article published in the journal Health Affairs, Atheendar Venkataramani, Dean Schillinger, and I make the case that standard approaches to cost-effectiveness analysis in health economics may inadvertently perpetuate health disparities. This issue deserves the attention of not just academics and researchers but also policymakers, payers, and providers who care about improving health equity.

Cost-effectiveness analyses are a cornerstone of decision-making. They help determine which interventions provide the most benefit per dollar spent. But the current methods have a critical flaw: they tend to undervalue interventions that would primarily benefit disadvantaged groups.