Universal health care (publicly funded) systems are under increasing general budgetary pressures from government departments of finance. This has led to delays and refusal to fund interventions on the basis of fiscal cost, regardless of cost effectiveness, leading to doubts about long-term sustainability of population health coverage. These decisions thus far have been based on established economic evaluation methodologies, which generally speaking do not capture broader, non-health budget fiscal effects of interventions such as loss of taxation revenue and increased government spending on benefits as well as positive net contributions to macro-economic benefits e.g. productivity. Previous published articles have examined broader economic consequences in relation to vaccination programs and funding of IVF programs, and concluded that funding of such programs can contribute positively to public finances and macro-economic benefits. We present a potential analytical framework based on the impact of a chronic disease on population productivity and subsequent loss of taxation revenue and increased sickness benefits expenditure through denial of access to effective, innovative medicines that could reduce the direct and indirect burden of disease. The framework is presented in the context of funding of chronic and debilitating disease in Asia Pacific countries, where particular emphasis is being placed on the growing burden of non-communicable diseases and the issue of ageing population, which in itself will contribute to lower tax revenues and increased levels of social benefit payments and medical costs. We hypothesize that such analyses should additionally be included in addition to existing factors which inform health funding decisions, at least in chronic debilitating diseases and their treatments, which are more likely to impact an individual’s ability to work and therefore contribute to broader economic benefits.