Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2018
This is the first of two papers which summarise key concepts in health economics and explains the differences in the various types of economic evaluation published in the economics literature. Examples from the economic analysis of mental health care are used to illustrate the key points. This paper explains the concepts of scarcity, rationing, opportunity cost and efficiency from a health economics perspective, and presents an ethical argument for the use of health economics in making decisions on resource use in mental health care.
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