Lawmakers and witnesses at a House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health hearing on Tuesday discussed the creation of a public-private body that would oversee research and compare treatment approaches for specific medical conditions, CQ HealthBeat reports. Subcommittee Chair Pete Stark (D-Calif.) said, "Getting reliable, unbiased comparative information is our best shot at controlling health spending while improving care and access." Stark also stressed the importance of the entity being "free from both industry and political influence."

Witnesses "devoted most of their testimony to offering advice" on how to organize and finance such an entity "to shield it from appropriations cuts and otherwise ensure stable funding while assuring the credibility of its findings," according to CQ HealthBeat. Mark Miller, executive director of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, said MedPAC would support an independent board free of political pressures and a staff that bases priorities on existing public and private research programs, rather than a large "bricks and mortar" agency. MedPAC suggested that the entity have mandatory funding sources, such as a tax on money collected by insurers or funding based on a small portion of the holdings in the Medicare Trust Fund.

Republicans "expressed concern" that the entity not be overly bureaucratic. Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.), the subcommittee's ranking member, said, "Government agencies should not be required to rely solely on comparative effectiveness data to set reimbursements or make coverage decisions."

Reps. Tom Allen (D-Maine) and Jo Ann Emerson (R-Mo.) are co-sponsoring legislation (HR 2184) that Allen said would establish "a public-private funding mechanism which will pool federal resources with funds from health insurance plans and large employers with self-insured plans." Stark did not indicate any specific legislative plans but praised the Allen-Emerson bill, according to CQ HealthBeat.

CBO Testimony
Congressional Budget Office Director Peter Orszag at the hearing said expanded research combined with changes in payment incentives for providers and patients "offers a promising mechanism for reducing health care costs to a significant degree over the long term while maintaining or improving the health of Americans." He added, "For any large-scale changes to occur, the new or expanded entity would have to generate new findings for a substantial number of medical conditions -- which would take many years." According to Orszag, it would be difficult to predict the entity's impact on spending "because it is hard to know what the research will show" (Reichard, CQ HealthBeat, 6/12).

The CBO testimony is available online.