A Note About the "Death Board"

My brother-in-law, a staunch conservative and fan of Glenn Beck recently told me that former Governor Palin "speaks her mind" when we talked about her comments obout "Obama's Death Board".

Engineering work is done according to standards of practice set by the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM).

Concrete is placed based on standards set by the American Concrete Institute (ACI).

Electrical work is standardized by the Unified Electrical Code.

All of these codes are based on research on best practices, and in each case you can do things differently than the code says, but you have to be able to justify it.

Actually, you can't compare these codes to the "comparative effectiveness research" funded under the House of Representatives healthcare reform bill H.R. 3200 because HR3200 DOES NOT require physicians or insurance companies to follow the guidance of the Center for Comparative Effectiveness Research. In fact, it does the opposite: H.R.3200.Subtitle A.Section 1401.Part D.Sec. 1181.(h) Construction- Nothing in this section shall be construed to permit the Commission or the Center to mandate coverage, reimbursement, or other policies for any public or private payer.' That is straight out of the actual text of the bill that I read online at http://thomas.loc.gov/home/c111query.html

In almost all cases, business executives want evidence based procedures that use actual metrics, not just baseless claims, to make decisions on. But to a demagogue like Palin, since the healthcare initiative is led by Democrats, the non-binding "comparative effectiveness research" is a "death board" that decides life and death based on an individual's "level of productivity in society". This is straight up nonsense and unethical scare tactics.

As recently as 2004, Merck sold $2.5 billion worth of Vioxx. It was pulled from the market because people taking it had four times the risk of heart attack as people taking generic anti-inflammatories like ibuprofen and naproxen. It also turned out the industry studies showcasing its effectiveness were fraudulent, and despite its huge cost (as much as $3/pill) it actually worked less well than good old ibuprofen. It sure would have been nice if patients that were being prescribed Vioxx could have been advised that cheap available ibuprofen worked better.

The drug industry is absolutely huge and plies its products with attractive people that basically bribe doctors into prescribing new drugs and techniques that are sometimes less effective than cheaper generic drugs and older techniques. I've been reading about this for years. I remember in 1990 when Raiders lineman John Matuszak died from a Darvocet overdose, I found out that Darvocet had been found not to work very well on pain but was known to be habit forming and an overdose danger.

We really need the Center for Comparative Effectiveness Research. What we don't need is a bunch of crazy talk that paints good people like me as Orwellian Stalinists.