The Case for Valuing Non-Health and Indirect Benefits | CU Experts

Overview

Abstract; Health policy is only one part of social policy. Although spending administered by the health sector constitutes a sizeable fraction of total state spending in most countries, other sectors such as education and transportation also represent major portions of national budgets. Additionally, though health is one important aspect of economic and social activity, people pursue many other goals in their social and economic lives. Similarly, direct benefits—those that are immediate results of health policy choices—are only a small portion of the overall impact of health policy. This chapter considers what weight health policy should give to its “spillover effects,” namely non-health and indirect benefits. This chapter defends the view that indirect and non-health benefits should not be given lower priority than direct health benefits in the context of priority-setting in global health.