Cost Benefit Analysis - A Tool In The Hands of A Planned Economy

It should seem common sense that something is wrong with an economic order when it is plagued with inflation and blunts in innovation. Hayek writes in Use of Knowledge,

prices can act to coordinate the separate actions of different people in the same way as subjective values help the individual to coordinate the parts of his plan

What is chiefly wrong with health care? To what shall we owe its sickening inflation and its frailty of innovation. When we perform cost benefit analysis we take macrostatistical values that may or may not apply to our population of interest. We then assess their impact on a subjective score of quality of life determine through surveys. Then we crunch those numbers through a simulator through which we input prices. Mind you we assume these prices will not fluctuate through our 10 year horizon. Then we finally discover that magical incremental cost effectiveness ratio. This number tells us that introduction of a medication, procedure or diagnostic test is worthy of its cost. We use these methods to allocate resources on behalf of the whole. We decide what medications are right for others given our estimation of their quality of life. This is none other than a planned economy.

Centralized authority preparing for our next influenza pandemic?

The CDC is preparing for our next influenza pandemic which our recent SARS scare gave us figures of a possibility of 1 and 8 deaths. According to Hayden F.G. (2001), we have available antiviral agents should a pandemic arise, which due to analysis of human historical frequency is due in our lifetime. So, the question is, can a central authority, like the CDC, adequately prepare us for the next influenza pandemic?

Put this question in economic terms: Can a central authority plan for the efficient distribution of resources? Can the CDC plan for the efficient distribution of antiviral agents? This depends on knowledge in totality of all the needs of the country in case of a flu pandemic.
According to Hayek in Use of Knowledge, "it is a problem of the utilization of knowledge which is not given to anyone in its totality." Hayek would worry that the CDC is planning the fate of our safety by determining the needs of antivirals in case a pandemic does arise. So would I.

Reference:
Hayden, F. G. (2001) “Perspectives on antiviral use duringpandemic influenzae” Philos. Trans. R. Soc. London B, Biol.Sci., 356 1877-84