Time-Specific Differences in Stated Preferences for Health in the United States

Area of Science:

• Health Economics
• Societal Preferences
• Health State Valuation

Background:

• Societal perspective on health state values may necessitate updates to preference-based health measures.
• Understanding temporal shifts in health preferences is crucial for accurate health valuation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate changes in US societal health preferences between 2002 and 2017.
• To determine if demographic shifts account for observed changes in health preferences.

Main Methods:

• Combined data from 2002 and 2017 US EQ-5D-3L valuation studies.
• Utilized time trade-off (TTO) methods for better-than-dead (BTD) states and analyzed worse-than-dead (WTD) states with transformed data.
• Employed regression models to estimate time-specific differences in health valuations, adjusting for respondent characteristics.

Main Results:

• Health valuations for better-than-dead states were significantly higher in 2017 compared to 2002 (P<0.001).
• Worse-than-dead state valuations showed significant negative changes over time, dependent on the transformation method (P<0.001).
• Overall valuations in 2017 were lower using a linear transformation (P<0.001) but showed no difference with a nonlinear transformation.

Conclusions:

• Societal preferences indicate a decreased willingness to trade quality of life for quantity in 2017 versus 2002.
• Evidence suggests that the elicitation era influences societal health preferences, supporting the need for updated value sets.