<p><span>INTRODUCTION:</span></p> <p><span>Health technology assessment (HTA) compares an intervention’s incremental costs and health effects, implicitly assuming all costs are interchangeable (“a cost is a cost”). However, policy developments in multiple jurisdictions suggest that policymakers place additional value on spending for on-patent drugs/therapies (“product costs”) compared to other spending such as staff time, generic drugs, or administration costs (“non-product costs”). This is operationalised by applying higher cost-effectiveness thresholds to products. This study examines how HTA should assess value when policymakers have preferences over both population health and products spending. </span></p> <p><span>&nbsp;</span></p> <p><span>METHODS:</span></p> <p><span>We developed a theoretical framework that formalises policymaker objectives as a trade-off between population health and the additional perceived value assigned to product spending. Using several examples, we assessed whether alternative formulations of cost-effectiveness metrics consistently implement these objectives.</span></p> <p><span>&nbsp;</span></p> <p><span>RESULTS:</span></p> <p><span>Conventional HTA methods can misvalue interventions depending on their mix of product and non-product costs. We derive a more consistent approach that applies separate thresholds to product and non-product costs. This framework increases the value attributed to high-price interventions which reduce non-product costs, such as curative gene therapies.</span></p> <p><span>&nbsp;</span></p> <p><span>CONCLUSIONS:</span></p> <p><span>The proposed framework provides a transparent and consistent approach to value assessment, with implications for which types of products are developed by industry and reimbursed by payers.</span></p>