Senate Committee Blocks Anti-Rationing Amendments

Robert Moffit / July 10, 2009

What has been going on in the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee for the past three weeks? Unless you’ve been carefully watching the mark-up of the Kennedy health bill, you wouldn’t be aware that Senators have been battling over many of the 398 amendments proposed to the legislation. You also wouldn’t know that all attempts to protect patients from health care rationing were defeated.

Comparative effectiveness research (CER), which is research that compares the clinical and/or cost-effectiveness of two health care treatments for the same condition, has been a contentious topic since the giant stimulus bill provided government agencies with $1.1 billion to conduct it. The Kennedy bill includes an increased role for CER. How this language is to be interpreted is crucial. (more…)