Weisbrod B A
J Health Polit Policy Law. 1983 Winter;7(4):808-45. doi: 10.1215/03616878-7-4-808.
The study reported on here is the first benefit-cost analysis of a controlled (random assignment) experiment in the mental health field. It compares, in terms of an unusually wide variety of tangible and intangible forms of benefits and costs, a traditional, hospital-based approach to treating the mentally ill with a nontraditional community-based approach. The research reported here supports the hypothesis that hospitalization of the mentally ill is, except for emergencies, less effective than community-based treatment of approximately equal cost. The research also confirms the hypothesis that the forms taken by the social costs of alternative programs can be so different that it is easy to mistake a change in the form of costs for a change in their level. Finally, this study highlights the fact that benefit-cost analysis, despite advances at both the conceptual and empirical levels, remains a mixture of science and art.
本文所报道的研究是心理健康领域中对一项对照（随机分配）实验进行的首次效益成本分析。它从种类异常繁多的有形和无形的效益及成本形式方面，将传统的基于医院的精神病治疗方法与非传统的基于社区的治疗方法进行了比较。此处报道的研究支持了这样一个假设，即除紧急情况外，精神病患者住院治疗的效果不如成本大致相当的社区治疗。该研究还证实了另一个假设，即替代方案的社会成本形式可能差异极大，以至于很容易将成本形式的变化误认为是成本水平的变化。最后，这项研究突出了这样一个事实，即尽管效益成本分析在概念和实证层面都取得了进展，但它仍然是科学与艺术的结合。
