MORE ON THE FREE MARKET FAIRY & HEALTH CARE REFORM

A former Bush Administration official admits that the current structure of the health care market won't respond to comparative effectiveness research.

'Comparative Effectiveness' In Health Care Debated
by David Welna
Morning Edition, July 21, 2009

Sean Tunis sees it differently. He was chief medical officer at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid during the recent Bush administration. He says that reducing health care spending "presumably means you're spending less than someone might otherwise want."

But Tunis doubts anyone will heed the federally funded research if doing so remains optional.

"There's plenty of opportunity for profit in health care without conducting your business efficiently," he says, "so I'm not sure that just ... left to the current marketplace mechanisms, you know, that there ... would be much natural incentive to use the comparative effectiveness research information."

That could all change, Tunis says, if Congress would add incentives for the kind of health care efficiency that relies on comparative effectiveness research.