I am currently attending (and speaking at) the Technology Policy Institute’s annual Aspen Forum. It’s refreshing to listen to presentations on issues other than healthcare. But, on the other hand, there are a lot of parallels.
One disturbing similarity was brought to mind by a talk given by FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell. The topic was regulation of the Internet. McDowell commented that he wasn’t sure when the question of “Should the Internet be regulated?” morphed into “How should the Internet be regulated?
And he was very clear that this was a disturbing “iterative change.”
Sound familiar? We should be asking ourselves the same thing about comparative effectiveness. When did “Should we adopt a national comparative effectiveness approach to healthcare?” morph into “How should we adopt a national approach to comparative effectiveness?”
There’s still time and opportunity to robustly debate the former so that we can avoid the latter.
We can, in the words of Commissioner McDowell, “avoid a race to the bottom.”
