How can you cut health-care costs? You can put more health-care decisions in the hands of consumers spending their own money.
Or ? as the latest Business Week reports ? you can turn to something called ?comparative effectiveness research?:
Tucked inside the 2,400-page bill is an item (it’s right there on page 1,617) that has generated far less attention and political heat than other parts of the White House’s plan to expand medical coverage to 32 million uninsured Americans. The measure requires the U.S. to put aside $500 million or more a year for something called “comparative effectiveness research,” an ungainly name for a process Obama hopes will reduce costs. The studies, designed to show which drugs, devices, and medical treatments work best, could have an enormous impact on the delivery of health care in the years ahead, scrutinizing everything from cholesterol drugs and heart stents to hospital procedures.
By using statistics-driven research methods, its backers say, comparative effectiveness promises to bring scientific rigor to medical decision-making that is too often influenced by tradition and marketing.
During a March 2009 presentation to the John Locke Foundation?s Shaftesbury Society, Sally Pipes of the Pacific Research Institute offered a different take on this type of research:
