LAUSR

A growing amount of literature claims that multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) is superior to economic evaluation in health technology assessment (HTA). The main arguments are that (1) MCDA includes a comprehensive and explicit list of value criteria not captured by the traditional methods of economic evaluation; (2) since it allocates quantitative weights to the different evaluation criteria, their relative importance is incorporated explicitly in the evaluation, thus making values and elicited preferences more consistent and transparent; and (3) the participation of all agents involved in assessing the value of alternatives increases the legitimacy of the process [1–14]. Arguments against MCDA include the inadequate treatment of opportunity cost, its vulnerability to double counting, and the fallacious attribution of deficiencies to methods of economic evaluation (EA) like cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) in HTA [13–24]. We do not consider further the third argument for MCDA, because such participation seems to be a standard element of good practice in CEA [25–32].