Vasco Grilo🔸 comments on Probability distributions of Cost-Effectiveness can be misleading

[Vasco Grilo🔸]

The below is a reply to a previous version of the above comment.

I do not think we want to maximise mean(“effect”—“cost”).

Note “effect” and “cost” have different units, so they cannot be combined in that way. “Effect” refers to the outcome, whereas “cost” corresponds to the amount of resources we have to spend.

One might want to include “-cost” due to the desire of accounting for the counterfactual, but this is supposed to be included in “effect” = “factual effect”—“counterfactual effect”.

We want to maximise mean(“effect”) for “cost” ⇐ “maximum cost” (see this comment).

[David Johnston]

Yeah, I was mentally substituting “effect” for “good” and “cost” for “bad”