Posted on 12/27/2011 10:28:52 AM PST by markomalley
Starting in 2012, the government will charge a new fee to your health insurance plan for research to find out which drugs, medical procedures, tests and treatments work best. But what will Americans do with the answers?
The goal of the research, part of a little-known provision of President Barack Obama's health care law, is to answer such basic questions as whether that new prescription drug advertised on TV really works better than an old generic costing much less.
But in the politically charged environment surrounding health care, the idea of medical effectiveness research is eyed with suspicion. The insurance fee could be branded a tax and drawn into the vortex of election-year politics.
The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute - a quasi-governmental agency created by Congress to carry out the research - has yet to commission a single head-to-head comparison, although its director is anxious to begin.
The government is already providing the institute with some funding: The $1-per-person insurance fee goes into effect in 2012. But the Treasury Department says it's not likely to be collected for another year, though insurers would still owe the money. The fee doubles to $2 per covered person in its second year and thereafter rises with inflation. The IRS is expected to issue guidance to insurers within the next six months.
"The more concerning thing is not the institute itself, but how the findings will be used in other areas," said Kathryn Nix, a policy analyst for the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank. "Will they be used to make coverage determinations?"
The institute's director, Dr. Joe Selby, said patients and doctors will make the decisions, not his organization.
"We are not a policy-making body; our role is to make the evidence available," said Selby, a primary care physician and medical researcher,
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
Come on now, the scribe tells us those panels were "widely debunked." Pay no attention to that neurosurgeon saying otherwise.
You're supposed to know what works BEFORE you pass it out like candy.
Another example surfaces about how devious and criminal “Obamacare” really is. It has purposes far beyond the lie of healthcare. But we have known this for far too long.
The term “DEATH TAX” now takes on another meaning too...
Succinct, Mark !
Barry is using some of his “warranty work” experience from General Motors and trying to apply those concepts to the human body. It doesn’t work that way. Medicine is an “art” that is “practiced”, not a pile of beans you can count. They are quickly inventing a lemon-law for healthcare. You can be replaced.
bflr
...................is to answer such basic questions as whether that new prescription drug advertised on TV really works better than an old generic costing much less..............
Or said in another way - force big pharma to stop trying to develop new expensive meds, as Obamacare will only cover the reimburement of generics - drugs past the twenty year patent protection period.
First, we will collect data that tells us what medicines are effective.
Then, we only permit medicines manufactured by our big pharma political contributors to be prescribed, whether those medicines are effective or not.
This is going to drive each and every single brilliant scientist we have out of our country and into the waiting arms of either Russia or China or India or any other country that isn’t determined to destroy itself.
“You’re supposed to know what works BEFORE you pass it out like candy.”
Yes. And isn’t that what the FDA is supposed to do?!
If not the FDA, where will this money go? And what is it, per year, per month, per pay or what?
My hubby had bad lipid results and automatically received scripts for five meds. I look squarely at the doc and said, if you cannot interpret the results well enough, then allow me. Turns out my hub had a slice of pound cake and a large starsucks mocha. Seriously, I made them redraw and he was fine. Back to the story.. research used to include efficacy studies. Guess they stopped that, o wait.. efficacy studies are still in the norm, so what could the gov possibly be up to? What was that? I heard someone say Grandma should take a pain pill instead.. Who was that guy?
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