FCCCER

[bemused_leftist]

Ah, that was the name of that thing.

President Obama’s Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research was sold as simply government helping doctors choose the best treatments. But there are dozens of medical journal review articles that do just that. The real purpose of such councils is ultimately to establish official criteria for denying reimbursement to less favored (because presumably less effective) treatments — precisely the triage done by the NICE committee in Britain [....]
letters@charleskrauthammer.com
washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/27/AR2009082703262.html

Comments

[kelsied.livejournal.com]

Depends how they structure and fund it. Especially how they fund it. It wouldn't be the first time the same government had separate agencies responsible for administering nearly identical programs for separate constituencies -- for instance, look at CalPERS and CalSTRS in California -- they both operate retirement programs for public servants, but they have separate budgets, authorities, governing law, staffs, resources and decisions. They often decide to work together on things, but there is no guarantee that they will make identical or even consistent decisions on a particular issue.

I imagine no matter what the feds do, they'll have to hire a whole lot more government employees to staff the new program, or to replace the government employees who leave other federal programs to staff the new program. All part of the shuffle... *grins*