This paper reviews the existing literature on the demand for dental care and assesses its implications for the U.K., where such analysis has been lacking to date. The characteristics of the U.K. dental system are briefly outlined, and some observations on the theory of the demand for dental care...

This paper critically reviews theoretical and empirical propositions regarding visual analogue scale (VAS) valuations of health states and their use in cost-utility analysis (CUA). A widely repeated assertion in the economic evaluation literature is the inferiority, on theoretical grounds, of...

The decisions made by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) give rise to two questions: how is cost-effectiveness evidence used to make judgements about the 'value for money' of health technologies? And how are factors other than cost-effectiveness taken into account? The aim of...