Introduction: With regards to environmental policy, it is important for governments to consider concepts such as risk, economic efficiency and cost-benefit. A common concern voiced by proponents of regulatory reform in recent decades has been that the costs associated with certain regulations outweigh the benefits that the regulations are intended to provide (Tengs &Graham, 1996). Another, and somewhat related, view is that, more intelligent regulatory policies could achieve the same social goals
resources is best for the society. The answer to such question depends crucially on the objective being pursued. When comparing different alternatives, under the classical assumptions of competitive markets (the Arrow-Debreu economy) and Pareto efficiency, a reallocation is said to be efficient if no one in the economy is made worse off and at least one individual is better off. However, such definition is very restrictive in at least two senses: first, it is not concerned with distributional issues
with a specific condition (Petrou and Wolstenholme, 2000). If the market mechanisms are quite useless in the health sector, how could the resource be allocated efficiently and equitably in health care? Therefore the objective (should it focus on efficiency or equity); the decision maker (who could decide the allocation) and the criteria of what attributes are important. These points are all key to make the allocation decision in health care. Before moving to the discussion of whether the welfarist