Comorbidities in cost benefit analyses of health care

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to examine the dependency of the benefits of health improvements on comorbid conditions. We find that under plausible conditions regarding the utility function over wealth and health, the willingness to pay for health improvements increases with the severity of the comorbid conditions. This positive relationship between willingness to pay and severity of comorbid conditions has implications both for the empirical elicitation of willingness to pay measures and for applications of cost benefit analysis in health policy