He writes:
But Mr. Cantor’s support for medical research is curiously limited. He’s
all for developing new treatments, but he and his colleagues have
adamantly opposed “comparative effectiveness research,” which seeks to
determine how well such treatments work.
What they fear, of course, is that the people running Medicare and other
government programs might use the results of such research to determine
what they’re willing to pay for. Instead, they want to turn Medicare
into a voucher system and let individuals make decisions about
treatment. But even if you think that’s a good idea (it isn’t), how are
individuals supposed to make good medical choices if we ensure that they
have no idea what health benefits, if any, to expect from their
choices?
Now is CCE really great or as Mr. Cantor infers is it a Trojan Horse. I am a great fan of medical research. But the CCE we are speaking of is not really research. It is effectively a bunch of Government paid people who may loosely be affiliated with the topic at hand, say prostate cancer, and who are "supported" by some mass of Government staff, who have the agenda at hand.
You see, I have served on may such committees and what I saw was often appalling. The appointees were politically chosen and worse the real work was performed by the staff of the related Government agency, whose agenda was to be verified. It was often not the best people who did the work but the staff who were young, inexperienced, managed by bureaucrats, and driven to produce some pre-ordained result.
Thus, one need look no further than the Prostate cancer analysis on PSA testing. The group coming to a conclusion did not appear to have the best of the best in the field, but some amalgam of folks who may know something and they had the staff collect data that seems in my opinion to justify the pre-ordained result that there should be no PSA testing.
Again as I have demonstrated the best results were even flawed, fatally I may say, because they asked the wrong question. Perhaps in my opinion they started out well intentioned but after fifteen years one learns more and the initial question is no longer relevant, as was the case with the PSA test.
Well to answer the gnome from the South, the fear my good man is that we have the wrong people, with an agenda, misinterpreting the clinical results, and doing so with no trained clinical understanding, and reaching a conclusion which will result in death! Is that clearer. The gnome from the South's opinion in economics will just send us all back to the Middle Ages, dependent on Edward II and his incompetent rulings. But the gnome from the South's opinions on Health Care may kill off a large portion of the population, kind of a plague of the 21st Century.
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