An article in the San Francisco Chronicle by Victoria Colliver explains:
- Why the Left and insurers want the government to fund comparative-effectiveness research (CER),
- Why conservatives and the health care industry oppose government-funded CER,
- Why the opponents of CER will prevail,
- That the Left is going to keep pursuing this fool’s errand anyway, rather than better ways to generate CER, and
- Why I want to knock all their heads together.
All that in a rather short article. Here are the best parts:
“The intent is to use that information to ration care. Why else would you come up with the research to help people choose what provides a lot of value for the money and what doesn’t?” said Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank…
“It is perfectly legitimate for Congress to ration care in government programs,” said Cannon, who believes any government effort to conduct comparative-effectiveness studies will quashed by industry. “That’s exactly why you don’t want government paying for medical care.”
