We thought the answer was YES.
There was no Cochrane review on this subject at the time this paper was written. (Note: When the best economic evaluation you can find to inform a commissioning decision is a few years old, you should always check whether there could be more up-to-date evidence that would significantly change any of the parameters, such as change in costs, a new systematic review on effectiveness etc.)
The UKPDS study is a large cohort study with nested RCTs. The authors state "because intensified hypertension did not have a statistically significant effect on CHD (in the UKPDS) our base case analysis assumed that the intervention has no effect on the CHD transition probability"; however if the estimate of effect size was clinically significant, but the particular part of UKPDS underpowered; then to assign a null effect may arguably not have been the most sensible decision for the base case.