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  1. How to cut healthcare costs? Easy – just check where the money is going. Then eliminate all the HBOs, insurance companies and all the other big business parasites in their shiny new office buildings who don’t actually treat patients or provide medicines but who are making billions off of the health care of American citizens – or just tax them at 90% to pay for universal health care for all citizens.
    Healthcare in the US is controlled by greedy un-regulated (“free market”) big business profiteers like HBOs and insurance companies who are only interested in making lots of money for their bottom lines and paychecks and to hell with stupid US consumers.
    The healthcare ‘industry’ is the only one still making billions in profits in this economy.

  2. centralized medical records as currently proposed is unnecessary, a total waste, don’t solve the problem and are dangerous to the patient and patient rights.
    A safer, much less expensive solution is readily available without the need for large software projects.
    Contact the above.

  3. I vigorously enddorse comparative effectiveness research (CER) but I am skeptical that the effort will get airborne. See http://mdwhistleblower.blogspot.com/2009/05/comparative-effectiveness-sound-policy.html
    The process will become highly partisan and politicized as various special interests will be under threat. They will protect their own interests instead the public’s interest. I don’t see how health care reform can succeed without CER, but I don’t see how CER can succeed.

  4. Comparative Effectiveness Research is essential–otherwise we are literally “operating in the dark”.
    The Council’s definition of CER begins with:
    “The purpose of this research is to inform patients…” Let’s not let them forget that. Too often the patient focus so prominent in the preambles of government statements has been completely missing from the action plans that follow. If Comparative Effectiveness Research is to be effective we must be able to move its findings into patient decision aids and to prescribe the patient decision aids to each patient who is facing such decisions. For more on how to do that see http://www.ixcenter.org.

  5. From the website: “To provide this information, comparative effectiveness research must assess a comprehensive array of health-related outcomes for diverse patient populations. Defined interventions compared may include medications, procedures, medical and assistive devices and technologies, behavioral change strategies, and delivery system interventions”
    The comparative effectiveness and outcomes of the HIT products and measuring devices that the government intends to use to make these determinations should, itself, first undergo comparative effectiveness study, or any study.
    Paying for and relying on data from any delivery system instrument, itself, that has not been proven to be safe and effective and is likely flawed (according to recent scientific reports) causing adverse outcomes, is not a good strategy.