Wrinkles in the Fabric of Obama's Healthcare Proposals

Science Receives A Budget Bonanza / Science News: "For instance, the stimulus directs that the National Institutes of Health spend $10 billion on biomedical research and laboratory upgrades or construction. It provides another $1 billion to be shared between NIH and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality on studies that compare either the effectiveness of different treatments, or the effectiveness of one treatment for different populations."

I worry about this sort of funding .. a billion for outcomes research when we do not know that outcomes research is any more valid than derivatives.

I am certainly not a Luddite, but a lot of what I hear from this sort of effort replaces hard science with evaluations that may not be correct because outcomes themselves are not easy to define. For example, when comparing cholesterol lowering drugs to angioplasty, studies need to correct for the costs to society of longevity vs the symptomatic relief from opening a coronary artery. Deciding that statins or angioplasty themselves work is relatively easy, deciding which is better is not so easy..