Facebook
Twitter
Features
Conservatives love to apply “cost-benefit analysis” to government programs—except in health care. In fact, working with drug companies and warning of “death panels,” they slipped language into Obamacare banning cost-effectiveness research. Here’s how that happened, and why it can’t stand.
How do we go forward? Explaining what’s at stake to the American public will not be easy. Every penny of that $750 billion the Institute of Medicine says we waste every year in health care goes into someone’s pocket. And the beneficiaries of that spending are not going to be quiet, from millionaire cardiologists performing unnecessary stent operations to drug and medical device makers peddling products that cannot be justified.
Not only are these interest groups highly concentrated and highly motivated, they are well funded and well practiced at manipulating public opinion. At the same time, even though prices in the U.S. health care system are primarily determined by a combination of market concentration, political manipulation, poor information, and sheer inefficiency, many citizens are predisposed to assume that more expensive treatments are always better than cheaper alternatives. And so, when told that “faceless bureaucrats in Washington” are busy putting a number on the dollar value of their lives in preparation for “rationing” their health care, they do indeed fear that “death panels” will decide who lives and who dies.
For those truly committed to the cause of health reform, overthrowing the ban on cost-effectiveness research now must move high on the agenda, and it requires clearly and forthrightly explaining what it really is and why it’s essential to everyone getting the best care possible. I have done the best I know how here to explain what’s going on and what’s at stake in ordinary language, but I certainly don’t have it down to a sound bite. Others must also try.
booch221 on March 04, 2013 11:38 AM:
So it's not the Military Industrial Complex that will bankrupt America, it's the Medical Industrial Complex.
markg8 on March 06, 2013 9:07 AM:
Great article, awful title.
Rich on March 15, 2013 11:15 AM:
The article is misleading as it is informative. This kind of research is, if anything, more common than it was a few years ago. the real problem is the recommendation part, particularly given that agencies like FDA, CDC, etc. are expected to make recommendations to the provider community and funders of services like HRSA are expected to put directives on what they fund.
jr13 on March 16, 2013 3:07 PM:
Miami/Dade is the fraud capital of the south for years they have fleeced the system. all insurance claims should be gone over line by line. the way it seems to be they wait too long to check and the company's that filed the false claims are long gone.