Allocating government resources for drug treatments continues to be a challenge in health care, particularly given the increasing number of high-cost personalized drug treatments, finite resources, and aging population. Since taxpayers fund government health budgets, it is important to understand how they think funding should be distributed, considering attributes such as cost of drug treatments, risk of dying, commonality of medical conditions, and quality of life changes with drug treatments. The aim of this study was to understand what attributes of a medical condition and treatment determine a community’s willingness to fund new drug treatments. Two decision-making contexts were explored: the allocation of funds from a health budget and a willingness-to-pay (WTP) perspective.

A representative sample of 500 Australian adults completed an online survey. The survey comprised two discrete choice experiments (DCEs) with different framing: an allocation of government funds and a WTP for drug treatments. The government allocation DCE allowed a choice between two hypothetical alternatives, each describing the medical condition and the drug treatment, while the WTP for funding showed one hypothetical alternative with an option to not fund the drug treatment. Seven DCE attributes, informed by a literature review, were displayed in each choice set relating to the medical condition (risk of dying, prevalence, and ages affected) and to the drug treatment (change in quality of life, additional life-years, availability of other drug treatments, and cost to the government and the taxpayer).

The resulting DCE model will establish the funding prioritization choices made by the general community. We expect changes in quality of life and risk of dying to be very important attributes. Of key interest for this study is how the difference in the decision-making context impacts preferences. We expect taxpayers to employ a stricter rule set in funding decisions when paying out of pocket (WTP exercise).

The findings from this research have implications for decision makers when aligning funding decisions with community preferences and values.