Advancing the science of health care costing.

The preceding articles in this volume amply illustrate and critically discuss the major issues in health care costing. This concluding article has 2 purposes. First, we synthesize and evaluate the main findings. Second, we identify the elements of a research agenda for improving the scientific soundness and relevance of health cost analyses for decision making. As noted, most health cost studies either assess the economic burden of disease or illness, or contribute to the economic evaluation of specific interventions. Whatever the arena of application, a health cost analysis generally proceeds through a sequence of steps that should be tailored to the problem at hand.