David Leonhardt claims that research into the effectiveness of different treatment options would “tell us how to reduce spending without damaging people’s health.” Nonsense. Medical-effectiveness research will simply provide the government with cover to ration treatment. That’s exactly what happens in other countries.
Last year, Britain’s medical-effectiveness agency, the National Institute of Clinical Effectiveness, announced that it wouldn’t pay for four new kidney cancer drugs — despite the objections of many British oncologists — because they cost too much.
Today, just one of those drugs is covered. Unsurprisingly, Britain’s survival rate for 13 of the 16 most prominent cancers dramatically trails that of the United States.
Sally C. Pipes President and Chief Executive Pacific Research Institute San Francisco, May 13, 2009
