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WASHINGTON -- The drug and medical-device industries are mobilizing to gut a provision in the stimulus bill that would spend $1.1 billion on research comparing medical treatments, portraying it as the first step to government rationing…
The House version of the stimulus package sent shudders through the drug and medical-device industry. In a staff report describing the bill, the House said treatments found to be less effective and in some cases more expensive "will no longer be prescribed."…
Mr. Obama supported research into comparative effectiveness during his campaign. Administration officials and leading Democrats in Congress say the idea will help government programs direct their dollars to treatments that are worth the money…
Companies "want to control the data, how it is reviewed, evaluated, and whether the public and government find out about it and use it," said Harry Selker, a Tufts University professor who directs its clinical-research program.
That also worries Jerry Avorn of Harvard Medical School, a frequent drug-industry critic. Comparative research "has the potential to tell us which drugs and treatments are safe, and which ones work," he said. "This is not information that the private sector will generate on its own, or that the industry wants to share."
Michael Cannon of the libertarian Cato Institute said comparative effectiveness research "isn't going to do any good because the industry will defund it as soon as it presents a threat."
When the government's Agency for Health Research Quality suggested in 1995 that there were too many unnecessary back surgeries, doctors and industry groups attacked the conclusion. Mr. Cannon noted that Congress at the time slashed the agency's budget and stripped its authority to make medicare-payment recommendations.
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