I think we’re talking past each other on exactly which counterfactuals we have in mind.
There seem to be a couple of bits:
Counterfactual A is: how much better magic mushrooms (MM) is than conventional treatment for people who undergo conventional treatment. This should be multiplied by the number of years before the rescheduling would otherwise have occured.
An additional counterfactual B is: assuming counterfactual A happens and is cheaper than current treatment, that should free up resources for treating the mentally ill who didn’t get MM treatment. Should also use the same timescale as A.
I’m now lost on exactly what you’re modelling. My model lumps A and B together and assumed a 0.1 HALY increase average across those with depression or anxiety in the UK.
Moving on
My understanding is that most public health cost-effectiveness modeling includes all costs of treatment, regardless of who’s paying.
I think this is the wrong way to think about it from an EA perspective. Imagine I’m a rich funder. I will pay for the ballot iniative, but I won’t be pay for the health treatments. hence when i do my cost-effectiveness analysis for the ballot, my cost is the ballot expenditure only, the benefit is the counterfactual happiness increase that rules from the new treatments occurring, presuming normal health stuff happens, i.e. doctors upgrade to the new treatments.
As the funder who wants to do the most good, I’m comparing the cost effectivess of this ballot to other things I could fund, like bednets. I’m not funding the treatments themselves, so that’s misleading. If I were a government, maybe I’d think about it the way you propose, but then governments dont fund ballot initiative, so that would also be misleading.
It could be the case that, one psychedlics are used in treatment, I could then, as a rich funder, think about paying for those vs paying for bednets. As I said before, that is also an important question. hence we want to split these apart for greater accuracy.
I think we’re talking past each other on exactly which counterfactuals we have in mind.
There seem to be a couple of bits:
Counterfactual A is: how much better magic mushrooms (MM) is than conventional treatment for people who undergo conventional treatment. This should be multiplied by the number of years before the rescheduling would otherwise have occured.
An additional counterfactual B is: assuming counterfactual A happens and is cheaper than current treatment, that should free up resources for treating the mentally ill who didn’t get MM treatment. Should also use the same timescale as A.
I’m now lost on exactly what you’re modelling. My model lumps A and B together and assumed a 0.1 HALY increase average across those with depression or anxiety in the UK.
Moving on
I think this is the wrong way to think about it from an EA perspective. Imagine I’m a rich funder. I will pay for the ballot iniative, but I won’t be pay for the health treatments. hence when i do my cost-effectiveness analysis for the ballot, my cost is the ballot expenditure only, the benefit is the counterfactual happiness increase that rules from the new treatments occurring, presuming normal health stuff happens, i.e. doctors upgrade to the new treatments.
As the funder who wants to do the most good, I’m comparing the cost effectivess of this ballot to other things I could fund, like bednets. I’m not funding the treatments themselves, so that’s misleading. If I were a government, maybe I’d think about it the way you propose, but then governments dont fund ballot initiative, so that would also be misleading.
It could be the case that, one psychedlics are used in treatment, I could then, as a rich funder, think about paying for those vs paying for bednets. As I said before, that is also an important question. hence we want to split these apart for greater accuracy.