February 8, 2014- By Steven E. Greer, MD
The HCC hosted a healthcare reform summit in 2009, after the ACA law was first announced by the new Obama administration. In the proposed legislation, the PCORI was created.
Properly administered, comparative effectiveness (CER) can be effective at reducing wasteful ineffective healthcare spending. Therefore, CER is a big fear of the industry, and politics will always have a heavy influence.
Now that the ACA “Obamacare” law has been implemented, the PCORI-funded wave of new studies will start to impact commonly used drugs and devices. Will it be quality research or junk science?
One segment from our 2009 summit featured Sir Michael Rawlins, who runs the UK’s comparative effectiveness agency called NICE (see video). It is worth re-watching. Even in the socialized British healthcare system, the healthcare industry muted much of the impact of British NICE decisions, and Mr. Rawlins was shy to even mention CER in our discussion.
Will the powerful industry lobbyists in the United States take the teeth out of American PCORI CER? Will the big bucks of industry infiltrate PCORI staff and created biasing conflicts of interest?
Industry conflicts arise at PCORI threatening any real comparative effectiveness research