To Their Own Devices
Five years later, Medicare underwrites more than half of the $4 billion the nation now spends annually on defibrillators, but the agency is no closer to knowing how many lives that big investment is saving. That is because the device companies did not finance the study beyond their initial $4 million commitment, and Medicare did not pick up the slack. As a result, researchers still cannot gather data that would identify the types of patients who would most benefit from a defibrillator.
Isn’t this typical of the way the government buys everything?
Ken, what is typical is that the government determines how health care is going to be paid for and almost the entire private sector adjusts to it and copies that same method of payment and then health reformers turn around and claim that poor results are proof of private sector failure.
Yet, now the government wants to create a comparative effectiveness board. Great.