Congress Considers Support for Comparative Effectiveness Research
Last month the Congressional Budget Office issued a paper entitled "Research on Comparative Effectiveness of Medical Treatments: Issues and Options for an Expanded Federal Role" that was prepared at the request of the Chairmen of the Senate Budget and Finance Committees. The report “examines options for expanding federal support for research on comparative effectiveness.”
The paper’s premise is that “rising costs for health care represent a central challenge both for the federal government and the private sector, but opportunities may exist to constrain costs in both sectors without adverse health consequences. . . . At the same time, only a limited amount of evidence is available about which treatments work best for which patients and whether the added benefits of more-effective but more-expensive services are sufficient to warrant their added costs. Together, those findings suggest that generating better information about the costs and benefits of different treatment options—through research on the comparative effectiveness of those options—could help reduce health care spending without adversely affecting health overall.”
Dr. Sean Tunis, MD, MSc, Director of the Center for Medical Technology Policy and GIM Fellowship alumnus, contributed to the report.
The full text of the CBO report "Research on Comparative Effectiveness of Medical Treatments: Issues and Options for an Expanded Federal Role" is available online.
Also available online is another recent CBO report from November 2007 on a related topic, “The Long-Term Outlook for Health Care Spending.”
