Maximising health versus sharing: Measuring preferences for the allocation of the health budget

Empirical evidence indicates that people consider sharing health resources to be important even in the absence of the attributes usually associated with equity (age, social class, ethnicity, disease severity or geographic location). If government is to take account of these preferences then survey methods are needed which allow their measurement. The present paper presents a new technique for measuring these preferences and reports the results of a representative survey of 626 Australians which employed the technique. The online and postal survey did not include any of the attributes usually associated with equity but was designed to quantify the respective importance of sharing life years (outcome egalitarianism), resource sharing per se and the changing importance of total health as other attributes varied. Results indicate respondents were primarily concerned with outcome egalitarianism, and that cost per life year had a relatively small effect upon their allocative decisions.