Disentangling public preferences for health gains at end-of-life: Further evidence of no support of an end-of-life premium

In many countries, it has been publicly debated whether health gains for patients at end-of-life (EoL) should be valued higher than health gains for other patients. This has led to a range of stated preference studies examining the justification for an EoL premium on the basis of public preferences - so far with mixed findings. In the present study, we seek to extend this literature. We apply a simple stated preference approach with illustrative binary choices to elicit both individual and social preferences for several types of health gains. More specifically, we investigate whether health gains at EoL, resulting from either an improvement in quality of life (QoL) or life expectancy (LE) are valued differently from similarly sized health gains from preventive treatment and treatment of a temporary disease. Furthermore, we examine whether social preferences are affected by the age of beneficiaries. A web-based survey was conducted in 2015 using a random sample of 1047 members of the general public in Denmark. Overall, we do not find evidence to support an EoL premium compared to other health gains, neither when preferences are elicited from a social nor an individual perspective. Furthermore, our results demonstrate that the type of the health gain received matters to preferences for treatment at EoL with more weight given to gains in QoL than gains in LE. Finally, we find heterogeneity in preferences according to respondent characteristics, perspectives and age of beneficiaries.