Comparative Effectiveness Research without Cost Data

Coming soon, courtesy of Congress, comparative effectiveness research (CER) without cost comparisons.  CER will conduct benefit-benefit research.  MedPage reported:

The 2009 economic stimulus bill included $1.1 billion to fund comparative effectiveness research, and the Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act (PPACA), the healthcare reform law passed six months ago, established the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute to identify priorities and conduct research to compare the clinical effectiveness of different medical treatments. But the PPACA explicitly forbids the new institute from considering costs of things like drugs, devices, treatments, services, or diagnostic tools in its comparative analyses.

Comparative effectiveness research looked the gold mine to insurers, ready to sell access to their databases.  Peter Orszag pushed clinical modeling, a move away from double blind clinical studies.  He compared clinical modeling to econometrics.  Recall what financial modeling did for Wall Street.