Sacred Disorder | Cliff Bostock's blog – 'Finally, I came to regard as sacred the disorder of my mind' (Rimbaud)
Another gift from the free market
Paul Krugman cites a report in the Wall Street Journal that Big Pharma and friends organized for this noble purpose:
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 purpose of the research is to ascertain comparative costs of treatments with the idea of having government agencies that underwrite health care fund the more effective ones. It’s incredible that there’s not such data already available, but that’s how the free market works! We’re all free to pay for expensive treatments that may not be as effective as lower-cost ones.
Obviously, if the affected companies won’t support comparative government studies, they aren’t going to do it themselves. Reading their logic for opposing the government’s plan is nauseating.
Thankfully (and surprisingly), the lobbying efforts failed and the provision was not gutted from the bill. It is an important step in the reform of our bloated health-care system.