Key Democrat Calls for Cost-Effectiveness Research in Medicare
In case you weren’t watching the HELP Committee hearing on FDA, Chairman Harkin just commented that while the Food and Drug Administration analyzes the safety of pharmaceuticals, it’s the role of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to analyze the “cost-effectiveness” of these treatments. In other words, Sen. Harkin said he wants Medicare bureaucrats to analyze treatments based on their cost – the implication being that those deemed “too expensive” by federal bureaucrats should be denied to patients.
Unfortunately, these views are far from a minority opinion among Obamacare supporters. Just last week, the liberal Commonwealth Fund hosted a briefing with the CEO of Britain’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE). Its acronym notwithstanding, NICE has proven to be anything but for British patients – denying access to important life-saving, and life-extending, treatments based solely or primarily on their cost. A series of examples can be found in this one-pager.
Similarly, CMS Administrator Donald Berwick – whose controversial views about “rationing with our eyes open” have made Democrats afraid to even consider his nomination – has also asserted that NICE and other similar bodies conducting cost-effectiveness research “have created benchmarks of best practices that we could learn from and adapt in this country.”
Obamacare created a new board of 15 unaccountable bureaucrats with the power to make binding rulings about Medicare policy. Today’s comments by Chairman Harkin about Medicare conducting cost-effectiveness research once again illustrate why Democrats set up such an unelected board: To have bureaucrats deny “expensive” treatments to Medicare patients.