Comparative Effectiveness in the Recovery Package
The stimulus package President Obama will sign into law today contains $1.1 billion for comparative effectiveness research. The money will support work to determine what treatments are effective for various conditions and which are boondoggles that unnecessarily increase healthcare costs.
Over at Gooznews.com, Merrill Goozner calls the provision “half a loaf,” lauding its inclusion, but expressing dismay at the fact that the conference report reads: “The conferees do not intend for the comparative effectiveness research funding included in the conference agreement to be used to mandate coverage, reimbursement, or other policies for any public or private payer.”
Donald Light explained the benefits of comparative effectiveness in his Science Progress article, “How Reducing Negligible Risks Drives Up Health Costs.” In it, he took a close look at the clinical trials for Crestor, a statin, and the subsequent media frenzy that followed the publication of results that it “slashed nearly in half” the risk of cardiovascular trauma for people taking it. In this case, “slashed in half” meant reducing risk from 1.36 percent to 0.77 percent, while offsetting the cardiovascular benefits with an increased risk of diabetes. Light goes on to explain that the current FDA new drug approval process more or less requires that new drugs “just have to be better than nothing.”
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