Health care costs are the elephant in the room (Photo by Lauren Nelson on Flickr)

As Democrats and Republicans continue their budget dance over non-military discretionary spending, the elephant in the room remains the rising cost of health care.  The Congressional Budget Office estimates that over the next 25 years, the percent of GDP spent on Medicare and Medicaid will double.  And these cost increases will not be limited to government programs.  Private and employer based costs will rise at the same rate—costs that will be reflected in higher prices and lower wages. Simply put, if you’re serious about the economy, then you are serious about long term containment of medical costs. Clearly, Congress is not serious about the economy.

According to Kaiser Health News, Republicans mocked proposals to improve the use of Medicare and Medicaid funds. They declared spending money on prevention was just a “slush fund,” and research on innovation was “an oxymoron.”  Further, there was no cause to pay for “so-called effectiveness research.”

Meanwhile, two House Democrats have signed onto a Republican bill to repeal a health reform provision for the Medicare payment board, which fast-tracks cuts to Medicare payments when spending reaches a pre-determined target. The CBO estimated the board would save $28 billion through 2019.

GOP 2012 hopeful Mike Huckabee attacked the Obama stimulus because it included funds for comparative effectiveness research saying, “The stimulus didn’t just waste your money; it planted the seeds from which the poisonous tree of death panels will grow.”

The proposals opposing efforts to reign in escalating health care costs may be partly political opportunism run amok, but likely also reflect a broad ignorance about the state of medicine as currently practiced. A panel of experts convened in 2007 by the prestigious Institute of Medicine estimated that “well below half” of the procedures doctors perform and the decisions they make about surgeries, drugs, and tests have been adequately investigated and shown to be effective. The rest are based on a combination of guesswork, theory, and tradition, with a strong dose of marketing by drug and device companies. (reference—subscription required)

In fact, the reliance of doctors on companies marketing treatments is downright frightening. In many cases, physicians perform surgeries, prescribe drugs, and give patients tests that are not backed by sound evidence because most doctors are not trained to analyze scientific data, says Michael Wilkes, vice dean of education at U.C. Davis. “Most medical students don’t learn how to think critically.”  The reality is that doctors are human. They trust what they are told, especially by their peers. Yet, a 2002 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) found that 87 percent of guideline authors received industry funding and 59 percent were paid by the manufacturer of a drug affected by the guidelines they wrote. Their peers, it seems, are largely bought and paid for by companies trying to sell something.

The holes in medical knowledge can have life-threatening implications, according to an Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality report published in 2001: More than 770,000 Americans are injured or die each year from drug complications, including unexpected side effects, some of which might have been avoided if somebody had conducted the proper research. Meaningless or inaccurate tests can lead to medical interventions that are unnecessary or harmful. And risky surgical techniques can be performed for years before studies are launched to test whether the surgery is actually effective.

Getting health care costs under control requires government sponsored comparative effectiveness research.  This is research aimed at determining what treatments actually work, and educating doctors.  Doctors and hospitals do not have the resources to self-fund this research.  And private companies are incented to sell drugs, devices, and treatments rather than cure patients.

Doctors are smart people. But they are only as good as the information they have available to them. Comparative effectiveness research will allow doctors to make better choices, reduce costs, and have healthier patients.  That’s money well spent. Money that is an investment in not only our health, but our economic future.