Conference
VFA Symposium on Benefit Assessment and Cost- Benefit-Assessment in Germany
- Date:
- 04 Apr 08
- Venue:
- Berlin
- Speakers:
- Adrian Towse
- Full Description
- Adrian Towse presented on “The assessment methods proposed by IQWiG. ” He focused in particular on the concept of the efficiency frontier proposed in the January 2008 Methods Guide IQWiG is planning to use to assess the cost-effectiveness of new treatments. The efficiency frontier is the centre piece of the proposal to enable the German insurers to set a “ceiling price” for a new product. Adrian argued that:
1. setting a ceiling price at an individual disease level would not avoid comparisons being made across diseases;
2. the cost-effectiveness of existing treatments in a disease area was not a good guide to future willingness to pay for innovation in that area;
3. the need to construct or find a (non-QALY) cardinal measure of effectiveness in each disease area was a major task;
4. constructing an efficiency frontier (including finding non-QALY cardinal measures) for each therapy area was both complex and unnecessary.
Overall the guidelines seemed to be based on (unrealistic) assumptions that the German health care system was not resource constrained, QALYs were not helpful, and that no cross-disease comparisons of value-for-money were appropriate.