I would not suggest that cost saving should be the criterion by which we judge the virtue of health care treatments. However, for the subset of treatments that are cost saving, it’s hard to justify not providing them.* I discuss one of them in a new post on the AcademyHealth blog. Take a look!
* It’s not impossible to justify not providing them. One way would be to show that some other use of funds yields a greater return (appropriately monetizing all effects, including those on health, well-being, and all externalities). In practice, this is a challenging exercise. Well, anyway, go read the post.
