Originally posted by: BarrySotero
Tom Dachle proposed a "Federal Health Board" that would "make tough decisions" and set "evidence-based standards for benefits and quality for federal programs and insurance". The foundations of the FHB were slipped into the "stimulus" undebated. George Will wrote about last winter
"The stimulus legislation would create a council for Comparative Effectiveness Research. This is about medicine but not about healing the economy. The CER would identify (this is language from the draft report on the legislation) medical "items, procedures, and interventions" that it deems insufficiently effective or excessively expensive. They "will no longer be prescribed" by federal health programs. The next secretary of health and human services, Tom Daschle, has advocated a "Federal Health Board" similar to the CER, whose recommendations "would have teeth": Congress could restrict the tax exclusion for private health insurance to "insurance that complies with the Board's recommendation." The CER, which would dramatically advance government control -- and rationing -- of health care, should be thoroughly debated, not stealthily created in the name of "stimulus."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...8/AR2009012802939.html
The new Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research is here
http://www.hhs.gov/recovery/programs/cer/index.html