CNSNews.com - GOP Senator Offers Bill to Prohibit Health-Care Rationing Based on Obama's 'Comparative Effectiveness Research'

CNSNews.com - GOP Senator Offers Bill to Prohibit Health-Care Rationing Based on Obama's 'Comparative Effectiveness Research'

Washington (CNSNews.com) - A group of Republican lawmakers led by Sen. Jon Kyl (Ariz.) are introducing a bill that would prohibit any move by the federal government to ration health care based on results derived from federally funded comparative effectiveness research.



The Preserving Access to Targeted, Individualized, and Effective New Treatments and Services (PATIENTS) Act of 2009 adds a “necessary safeguard” to last year’s economic stimulus bill, which included $1.1 billion for comparative effectiveness research but did not specify that the research could not be used to ration health care.

“We feel it is necessary to introduce this bill to make it crystal clear that the government should not be funding research which is then going to be used in one way or another to ration health care for Americans, to decide what diagnostics or treatments or prescriptions or care can be allowed under any kind of federal program,” Senate Republican Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) said at a briefing with reporters Monday.

CER is typically used to analyze collected data to calculate and compare the effectiveness of certain medical treatments. Physicians use this information to determine how to treat patients.

However, insurance companies can also use it to authorize only the treatments that are most cost-effective, making it difficult for some people to receive the more personalized treatment they need.

“There’s nothing wrong with this type of research--in fact, it’s extraordinarily helpful,” Kyl said. “The problem comes when that research is then converted to a different purpose, where a government bureaucrat decides that based upon this research they can determine that in most cases, it’s more cost-effective to use treatment A, rather than treatment B.”

“We are trying to emphasize that health care reform should be all about the patients,” Kyl said. “Everybody likes to talk about ‘patient-centered’ (health care), and we really mean it, because care that one patient has been told he or she may need to have may be very different from care or treatment that another patient with a similar condition or disease has.”

“CER (comparative effectiveness research) cannot be used to deny coverage of an item or service under a federal health care program,” Kyl added. “That’s it. It’s very simple.”

Kyl outlined that neither insurance companies nor the federal government should interfere with the patient-doctor relationship.

“When the doctor says a patient needs ‘device A’ or ‘treatment B’ or ‘drug C,’ I don’t think anybody should get in between the patient and the doctor,” he said.

Kyl said GOP lawmakers favor an approach that boosts the competition in the private sector of the insurance industry, rather than allowing the federal government to dictate how physicians administer health care.

“I favor that system where we have lots of different companies with lots of different kind of policies,” he said.

Although low-income households may have difficulty affording insurance and therefore may be indirectly subjected to rationing because they cannot access certain treatments, Kyl said a public health care option run by the federal government is a slippery slope to a more direct rationing method.

“On the one hand you have a system in the private sector where sometimes that might happen, and it’s extraordinarily unfortunate if it does. On the other hand, we have a government system in which we know it will happen, and you’ve got no appeal from it.

He also said that President Obama is hurrying health care reform in order to ratify it before the public has time to protest.

“There’s a reason why the president has said ‘if we don’t get this done soon, it’s not going to happen,’” Kyl said.

“Why? Why does he say that? Because he knows that momentum will inevitably slow for something that’s extraordinarily costly, will deny people the coverage that they already have, will ration their health care, and could provide some kind of government insurance company that’s going to drive out the private insurance companies that provide all these options,” he added.

“It will impose new taxes, it will tell employers that they either have to pay a certain amount of money to cover people or they’re going to be fined,” Kyl said.

“These are all things that people, I think, are going to reject when they hear about it. They’re just now beginning to hear about it. People are beginning to get the details and they are beginning to ask whether it’s a good idea,” Kyl continued.

He also pointed out that there is still much work to be done before “Congress can complete health care reform by October,” as President Obama requested in his letter to Sens. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Max Baucus (D-Mont.) earlier this month.

“Bear in mind, (Obama’s comments came) before a single bill is actually written – before we have a single mark-up in committee,” Kyl said.

“I understand that significant parts of the Health Committee bill are not written. We don’t have a Finance Committee bill written, and yet the president says we have to ram this through really quickly or else momentum for it will slow to the point where it might not pass. I think he’s right, but the American people have a right to know what’s in here,” he said.

Kyl drafted the bill with Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). Sens. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) and Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) co-sponsored it.