The Wall Street journal reports that “Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus formally unveiled a 10-year, $856 billion bill that would extend health insurance to tens of millions of Americans but that found lukewarm support among other key senators, indicating changes to the measure are in store.”

Read more: Baucus Unveils $856 Billion Health-Care Legislation

Let us know what you think…

Mr. Feldstein, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Ronald Reagan, is a professor at Harvard and a member of The Wall Street Journal’s board of contributors. Mr. Feldstein asserts that “rationing” is central to the Obama Administrations healthcare reform package.

Read the full article here: ObamaCare Is All About Rationing

The White House officially launched the Health Insurance Reform Reality Check web site to battle the supposed Health Care ‘Rumors’. The Reality Check web site is designed the same way that Fight the Smears website was during President Obama’s candidacy for election. The objective of Health Insurance Reform Reality Check is to fight off white the White House is characterizing as “wild rumors” and other “myths” about the impending health care reform. The web design uses a solid Social Media platform in hopes of connecting with younger users and those akin to using social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. “We’re offering the site and tools to empower individuals across the country to take this content into their own hands and share it among their networks,” a senior administration official said.

The Health Insurance Reform Reality Check website uses video clips to help state their case:

View Valerie Jarrett disputing the claim that health care reform will lead to “rationing.”

View Melody Barnes, director of the Domestic Policy Council, disputing what the White House calls a “malicious myth” — the idea that reform would lead to euthanasia for seniors.

View Matt Flavin, Director of Veterans and Wounded Warrior Policy, explains that nothing in health insurance reform will affect veterans’ access to the care they get now.

View Christina Romer, Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, debunks the myth that health insurance reform will hurt small businesses.

The website also offers tools to share and email these video’s – check it out here.

The Disruptive Women’s Blog has put out an eBook on Comparative Effectiveness Research. You can download it for free at their website.

Here is an excerpt from the announcement…

At the end of June 2009, Disruptive Women in Health Care ran a series of posts that explored the issue of Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER) from a variety of viewpoints and perspectives:Comparative Effectiveness ebook cover

• Patients
• Providers
• Innovators
• Caregivers
• Policymakers
• Rare Diseases
• Minorities
• Gender

While there is tremendous potential in the power of CER, there remain a number of troubling issues and difficult questions.  The promise and the pitfalls are reflected in the new CER ebook we put together, which encapsulates each of the posts.

Download a free copy of the CER eBook.

If you are not signed up for the updates the AHRQ sends out – now is the time. This just came across the wire…

We are pleased to inform you of the August 7, Notice of Intent to Publish from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) to publish grant and contract solicitations for comparative effectiveness research projects with $300 million in funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). AHRQ anticipates grant and contract solicitations to be published beginning in fall 2009 with awards starting in spring 2010.

AHRQ has supported comparative effectiveness research for many years. Since 2005, this research has been funded through the Agencyâ??s Effective Health Care Program, which provides systematic reviews, supports new research to fill information gaps, and develops other translational information and tools designed to inform health care decision making.

AHRQ’s comparative effectiveness research projects that will be funded under ARRA will focus initially on 14 priority conditions that the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services established under Section 1013 of the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003, which can be found at http://effectivehealthcare.ahrq.gov/aboutUs.cfm?abouttype=program#Conditions.

Grants for comparative effectiveness research funded under ARRA include the following amounts and areas:

• $148 million for evidence generation, including prospective studies and patient registries.
• $29.5 million to support innovative translation and dissemination grants.
• $20 million to support training and career development.

Contracts for comparative effectiveness research funded under ARRA include the following amounts and topics:

• $9.5 million to establish an infrastructure to identify new issues for comparative effectiveness review investments.
• $10 million to establish a citizen’s forum to formally engage all stakeholders and to expand and standardize public involvement in the entire effective health care enterprise.

Additionally, AHRQ anticipates supporting other grants ($1 million) and enhancing existing contracts for evidence synthesis ($50 million), evidence generation ($24 million), translation and dissemination ($5 million), and salary and benefits for ARRA-related full-time equivalent positions ($3 million).

Until the solicitations are published, AHRQ cannot provide additional information on their contents. In the meantime, interested parties may sign up to receive e-mail updates about AHRQ’s Effective Health Care Program by clicking on the red envelope at the top of http://effectivehealthcare.ahrq.gov/.

Prioritizing Comparative-Effectiveness Research — IOM Recommendations
J.K. Iglehart
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/NEJMp0904133?query=TOC

Comparative-Effectiveness Research — Implications of the Federal Coordinating Council’s Report
P.H. Conway and C. Clancy
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/NEJMp0905631?query=TOC

The National Comparative Effectiveness Summit will be held September 16 – 17, 2009 at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, in Washington, DC.

The purpose of the National Comparative Effectiveness Summit is to provide an overview of the current status of comparative effectiveness research in the United States, to draw lessons for the CER experience in other countries and to identify the practical implications of CER for various actors in the healthcare industry, including payors and health plans, hospital and health systems, physician organizations, clinicians and other healthcare professionals and pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device manufacturers.

The organizers of the summit explain the will feature the following sessions:

SPECIAL PRECONFERENCE SESSION:
Assuring that Comparative Effectiveness Research Extends to Treatment Delivery Methods, including Inpatient Hospitalist and Chronic Care Delivery Methods

AND SPECIAL SESSIONS ON:

• Methods and Data Infrastructure Needed for Comparative Effectiveness Research
• The Advantages of Comparative Effectiveness Research
• The Limits of Comparative Effectiveness Research
• An Overview of Federal Stimulus Funding of Comparative Effectiveness Research
• The Role of AHRQ, HHS and NIH in Comparative Effectiveness Research
• Seeking Effectiveness in Health Care Reform: What’s at Play in Washington?
• The International Experience in Comparative Effectiveness Research
• Comparing Effectively:The Role of Registries in Comparative Effectiveness Research
• How States are Already Using Comparative and Cost-effective Research to Make Policy Decisions
• Balancing Act: CER and Innovation in U.S. Health Care
• The Implications of CER to Pharmaceutical Manufacturers
• The Implications of CER to Medical Device Manufacturers
• The Implications of CER for Private Health Insurers: Will it Impact Coverage and Payment?
• Operational CER in a Medicare Health Plan to Develop Effective and Efficient Delivery Systems and Clinical Programs
• The Implications of CER for Health System Group Purchasing Organizations
• Motivations and Incentives for Clinicians to Develop and Use CER Best Practices
• Can Consumers Use Comparative Effectiveness Information Effectively?

The NIH’s initiative designed to fund approximately 200 grants has flooded the system.  Earlier this week, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius announced that the NIH has received approximately 20,000 Challenge Grant applications through the Recovery Act.

The unprecedented number of applications is placing a huge burden on the peer review process at the NIH.  I am not sure it he NIH has the capacity to handle all of the submissions. It is likely that the quality of the review will diminish rapidly. In addition, it is likely that this influx of grants will reduce the percentage of fundable grant applications in the fall.

To add insult to injury, the NIH received only a meager increase in their funding for next year.

Something has to give…

Ted Kennedy is making moves, and this time he appears to be serious. A great Op-Ed piece by Kennedy ran in the Boston Globe on May 28th – Titled: Health bill would fix what’s broken

OVER THE LAST YEAR, I’ve seen our healthcare system up close. I’ve benefited from the best of medicine, but I’ve also witnessed the frustration and outrage of patients and doctors alike as they face the challenges of a system that shortchanges millions of Americans.

We have the greatest doctors and medical innovations in the world, but more and more Americans are on the outside looking in to a world of progress and discovery that is denied to them because they cannot afford quality healthcare.

That’s wrong – and it’s about to change.  Read Kennedy’s Op-Ed

According to the Gooznews…

The committee advising the Health and Human Services department on how it should spend its portion of the $1.1 billion for comparative effectiveness research included in the stimulus package has listed cost of care as a major factor to consider when determining what research ought to get done. That recommendation rejects testimony from industry and some patient advocacy groups (mostly industry-funded), who specifically called for eliminating cost as a factor when considering which technologies to evaluate.

Here’s the first of HHS’ five proposed criteria:

1. Potential Impact (based on prevalence of condition, burden of disease, variability in outcomes, and costs of care)

Be sure to submit feedback prior to June 10, 2009. HHS Feedback Form