The stimulus legislation would create a council for Comparative Effectiveness Research. This is about medicine but not about healing the economy.
The CER would identify (this is language from the draft report on the legislation) medical "items, procedures and interventions" that it deems insufficiently effective or excessively expensive. They "will no longer be prescribed" by federal health programs. The next secretary of health and human services, Tom Daschle, has advocated a "Federal Health Board" similar to the CER, whose recommendations "would have teeth": Congress could restrict the tax exclusion for private health insurance to "insurance that complies with the Board's recommendation."
The CER, which would dramatically advance government control (and rationing) of health care, should be thoroughly debated - not stealthily created in the name of "stimulus."
