Economic evaluation
10.7 Time Horizon
In the reference case, the time horizon should be long enough to capture all potential differences in costs and outcomes associated with the interventions being compared (Fox-Rushby & Cairns, 2005; Gold et al., 1996). The same time horizon must be applied to costs and outcomes for analytical consistency. (Bryan et al., 2017, p. 31)
Future costs and benefits should be discounted. Different discount rates are used to test the robustness of the results. Debates exist regarding the appropriate discount rate to apply to costs and effects, particularly concerning its value and whether the same should be used for both costs and effects. Additionally, there are ethical discussions about whether long-term effects should be discounted, as discounting assigns a smaller value to effects occurring in the distant future. In fact, some argue that effects should not be discounted at all, citing principles of intergenerational justice.
