The love affair
between Republicans and ineffective medicine grows ever more torrid. Last week it was seeking to undermine
the US Preventative Services Task Force, this week it's eliminating
health services research.
These attacks on
effectiveness research are bizarre.
Republicans claim to support market solutions to health care, but one of
the biggest obstacles to that is that people have no idea what they are buying. Are they buying a Cadillac treatment that
delivers 100% satisfaction with no side effects or a 1979 Pinto that will blow
up in their face? When people can't tell
the difference between shit and shinola there is no market and you can't have
market solutions. If Republicans are in
any way serious about markets they should be advocating for more effectiveness
research, not less.
So what explains the
attraction? Why do Republicans seek to
protect treatment that doesn't work, like widespread PSA
screening? It's almost like they're
afraid of the paradigm of using evidence to guide decisions. Probably because in the real world so much
evidence goes against them...
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