An interview with NIH director Francis Collins

The Washington Post interviewed Francis S. Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, about the health care bill and the human genome project, among other topics. Collins said of things he was glad to see in the health care bill, "The most significant thing is comparative effectiveness research. We've been doing a lot of that for many years, although it wasn't necessarily called that."

As for things he thinks the bill missed overlooked: "It could be a long list. I suppose we all hoped to see more of an emphasis on understanding how incentives for providers play a role in the cost of health care. That seems like the big area where we could have seen a lot of potential cost savings, and perhaps we will yet" (Saslow, 3/24).