"Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., said Tuesday he expects Senate health-care legislation will include provisions encouraging doctors to compare drugs and therapies for their effectiveness," Dow Jones Newswires reports.
At a conference at the Brookings Institution, "Baucus said he plans to re-introduce legislation with Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., that further boosts" comparative effectiveness research. The research, which "saw $1.1 billion from the federal stimulus package earlier this year," lets "doctors and patients to utilize publicly-available information on medical treatments, has emerged as something of a political lightning rod this year. Some conservative Republicans are suggesting it would result in rationing of health care." But Baucus "sought to dispel that notion Tuesday, saying that the research would not be used solely to cut costs" (Yoest, 6/9).
Kaiser Health News adds that "Baucus says lawmakers can ease critics' fears by ensuring that research is 'patient focused,' that physicians play a significant role and that decisions are based on clinical evidence about what works best, not solely on cost." The Baucus-Conrad bill from last year "would have created a public-private comparative effectiveness institute to set national research priorities and contract with government agencies and private groups to conduct the evaluations" (Appleby, 6/9).