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Because: - all health care systems are run by professionals who cannot be excluded from evaluation of any aspect of process and outcome within these systems; - economic evaluation is heavily dependent on the estimates of the effectiveness of the various health care interventions. The involvement of health care workers should ensure that all dimensions of evaluation are taken into account in a multidimensional approach which includes equity and humanity as well as effectiveness and economic efficiency. This function is especially important when a health care worker, usually a GP, is called to be the patient's "agent" in an uncertain and complicated health "market". As the GP's experience and training allows him or her to advise the patient, so an equivalent basic understanding of economic principles will allow better judgment both of services on offer and of allocation of the GP's own resources; - workers in many health care systems are called to hold managerial functions of ever increasing complexity which require a basic understanding of the principles underlying economic evaluation;