Health Care Coverage Determinations

Virtually every developed country is facing rapidly rising healthcare costs. There is a widespread consensus that the primaryfactor driving health care cost growth in most countries is thecontinual development and diffusion of new, and generallymore expensive, health care technologies. Health Care CoverageDeterminations describes and analyzes the institutions andprocedures that eight developed countries are using to assesshealth care technologies as they struggle to determine whetherto pay for those technologies through public insurance programsor to lay some of these costs at the feet of the consumer.