Department of Health Services Research and Policy, Research School of Population Health, Australian National University, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia.
Erasmus School of Health Policy & Management, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
Health Econ. 2023 Jul;32(7):1434-1452. doi: 10.1002/hec.4673. Epub 2023 Mar 15.
Government investment in preparing for pandemics has never been more relevant. The COVID-19 pandemic has stimulated debate regarding the trade-offs societies are prepared to make between health and economic activity. What is not known is: (1) how much the public in different countries are prepared to pay in forgone GDP to avoid mortality from future pandemics; and (2) which health and economic policies the public in different countries want their government to invest in to prepare for and respond to the next pandemic. Using a future-focused, multi-national discrete choice experiment, we quantify these trade-offs and find that the tax-paying public is prepared to pay $3.92 million USD (Canada), $4.39 million USD (UK), $5.57 million USD (US) and $7.19 million USD (Australia) in forgone GDP per death avoided in the next pandemic. We find the health policies that taxpayers want to invest in before the next pandemic and the economic policies they want activated once the next pandemic hits are relatively consistent across the countries, with some exceptions. Such results can inform economic policy responses and government investment in health policies to reduce the adverse impacts of the next pandemic.
政府对大流行病的准备工作从未如此重要。COVID-19 大流行引发了关于社会在健康和经济活动之间愿意做出何种权衡的辩论。目前尚不清楚的是：(1)不同国家的公众愿意为避免未来大流行病导致的死亡而放弃多少 GDP；以及 (2)不同国家的公众希望政府投资哪些卫生和经济政策，以准备和应对下一次大流行病。我们采用面向未来的、多国家离散选择实验，对这些权衡进行量化，发现纳税公众愿意为避免下一次大流行病中的每例死亡而放弃 392 万美元（加拿大）、439 万美元（英国）、557 万美元（美国）和 719 万美元（澳大利亚）的 GDP。我们发现，在下次大流行之前，纳税人希望投资的卫生政策和下次大流行爆发后希望启动的经济政策在这些国家之间相对一致，但也存在一些例外。这些结果可以为经济政策应对措施和政府投资卫生政策提供信息，以减轻下一次大流行的不利影响。
