I think in this thread there are two ways of defining costs:
Michael considers the cost as the total amount spent
Stan suggests a case where the cost is the amount needed to be spent per unit of intervention.
I think this is the major source of disagreement here, right?
This discussion resembles the observation that the cost-effectiveness ratio should mostly be used in the margin. That is, in the end we care about something like (total effect)−(total cost) and when we decide where to spend the next dollar we should compute the derivatives with respect to that extra resource and choose the intervention which maximizes that increased value.
I think in this thread there are two ways of defining costs:
Michael considers the cost as the total amount spent
Stan suggests a case where the cost is the amount needed to be spent per unit of intervention.
I think this is the major source of disagreement here, right?
This discussion resembles the observation that the cost-effectiveness ratio should mostly be used in the margin. That is, in the end we care about something like (total effect)−(total cost) and when we decide where to spend the next dollar we should compute the derivatives with respect to that extra resource and choose the intervention which maximizes that increased value.