FixHealthCarePolicy

Study Questions “Savings” of Comparative Effectiveness Research

Despite assertions from policymakers and health experts that comparative effectiveness research — which received $1.1 billion in funds from in the stimulus bill — will save doctors and patients money and reduce inefficiencies in the health care system, a recent BusinessWeek article highlights a study that suggests otherwise.

The Rand Corp. found that in the short term, “such research would neither reduce spending and waste nor improve patient health, because it takes time to change doctor and patient behaviors,” the article said.

“In the US, where the doctor-patient relationship is sacrosanct, just because a study says a particular treatment is superior for most patients, or the most cost-effective, doesn’t mean practitioners will embrace it,” the article noted.

Tags: comparative effectiveness research, doctor-patient relationship, stimulus

Five Questions for Health Care Townhalls

From Long Island to Philadelphia to Austin, Texas, Democrats returning from Washington to host townhalls are getting an earful from constituents about their concerns over President Barack Obama’s health care plan. Despite the fact that all recent polls show that a majority of Americans do not support Obamacare, the left still has the audacity to claim that the concerned citizens showing up at these events are health insurance industry stooges.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) told the Center for America Progress: “These health insurance companies and people like them are trying to load these town hall meetings for visual impact on television.” But when actual journalists have reported on who is showing up at these events, they are telling a different story. Reporting on events in Pennsylvania and Texas, the New York Times describes the protests as “organized by loose-knit coalition of conservative voters and advocacy groups.”

This country deserves a respectful, honest debate about health care. And the hundreds of townhalls Members of Congress will be hosting across the country this August are just the place for that conversation to happen. Here are just five questions Americans should be pressing their elected leaders on over the coming month: (more…)

Tags: abortion, comparative effectiveness research, Congressional Budget Office, deficits, Douglas Elmendorf, Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, Health and Human Services, Paul Krugman, Rep. Barney Frank, Rep. Dean Heller, Rep. Jan Schakowsky, Rep. Patrick Tiberi, Sen. Dick Durbin, Sen. Tom Coburn, townhall meetings

Britain’s Not-So-NICE Decision on Painkillers

The U.K. Telegraph reports that tens of thousands of patients suffering with chronic back pain in the United Kingdom will have to forgo “painkilling injections” such as cortisone, after the government’s National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) recently determined that “the evidence was limited” for the painkillers’ effectiveness. 

Instead of funding the steroid injections, which total more than 60,000 annually, the single-payer health care system will instead push acupuncture or osteopathy for patients with persistent lower back pain when the cause is not known.

As noted in the Telegraph, “Specialists fear tens of thousands of people, mainly the elderly and frail, will be left to suffer excruciating levels of pain or pay as much as £500 (roughly $842) each for private treatment.”

 Helen Evans, a registered general nurse in the United Kingdom and director of Nurses for Reform, has warned how comparative effectiveness research councils like NICE can worsen patient access to quality care.

Tags: comparative effectiveness research, NICE, painkillers, single-payer health care system, United Kingdom