Of all the potential reforms to the health-care system, one of the most profound might turn out to be a government-funded effort to independently vet the effectiveness of competing treatments.
You can easily compare various TVs, laundry soaps and cell phones to learn which are best. But good luck trying that with most drugs and medical devices. The stakes, given the more than $2.2 trillion spent on health care each year, could hardly be higher. But many companies — and even some medical specialties — shy away from the risk of performing head-to-head trials that just might put their whiz-bang products or procedures in a bad light.
A big reason for the discrepancy was underscored over the weekend by results of a study that showed pricey stents and some brand-name drugs were no better than insulin in reducing deaths, heart attacks and strokes in patients with type 2 diabetes and stable heart disease.
“It really didn’t matter at all which treatment you had,” epidemiologist Trevor Orchard, who worked on the study, told The Wall Street Journal.
An editorial about the study in the New England Journal of Medicine laid out the broader challenge, “As health care costs continue to spiral upward, physicians, payers, and health economists need to make informed, evidence-based treatment decisions that improve both symptoms and clinical outcomes. ”
Compare This: Uwe Reinhardt, the Princeton economist who spoke about health-care economics at AHCJ’s annual meeting in April, explains comparative effectiveness in this blog post for The New York Times.
