October 3, 2008
Is Ignorant Dogmatism Possible? I'm Afraid So.
October 3, 2008
The Lamps Are Going Out
October 3, 2008
What If the Median Voter Were a Failing Student?
October 3, 2008
Credit Default Swaps
October 3, 2008
How Government Used Fannie and Freddie
October 2, 2008
The International Angle
October 2, 2008
Cochrane and Rogoff on the PBS News Hour
October 2, 2008
Henry Waxman's Hearings
October 2, 2008
Economists' Bipartisan Bailout Opposition
It'll never happen. Way too many variables to control for. I am a doctor, and even things as 'routine' as a lap chole or a hernia repair or a revascularization procedure have so many variables that each patient is unique in the benefit that they may received from the procedure and what the procedure will entail for them and the complications they may face. While it's a noble idea, humans don't lend themselves to being analyzed in the same way you analyze cars coming off the assembly line. Spend a day working with real patients with real problems and this will become abundantly clear.
It'll never happen. Way too many variables to control for. I am a doctor, and even things as 'routine' as a lap chole or a hernia repair or a revascularization procedure have so many variables that each patient is unique in the benefit that they may received from the procedure and what the procedure will entail for them and the complications they may face. While it's a noble idea, humans don't lend themselves to being analyzed in the same way you analyze cars coming off the assembly line. Spend a day working with real patients with real problems and this will become abundantly clear.
Zach may have a point. Possibly a better avenue to investigate is the effectiveness of drugs. My pharmasist tells me that over the counter Benadryl is more effective than the perscription alternatives. I have heard before calls for some agency to determine the efficacy rating of drugs. Yet again, a good idea not acted upon?
This already happens, supposedly, in the UK - with truly massive govt funding going to the Cochrane Collaboration and other types of self-styled Evidence Based Medicine, and various govt agencies such a NICE which rations drugs.
IMO the main effect is to make the UK NHS even more of a soviet-style technocratic provider than it already was.
Furthermore, the results of these evaluations are easy to manipulate, by choice of variables and statistical methods. It is especially easy to show 'no significant benefit' and delay or restrict access to new treatments. In the end the biggest and most powerful bureacracies impose their will on individual consumers - the old story.
All the problems of the FDA multiplied manyfold.
Health care evaluation is the opposite of a libertarian solution when it encompasses almost the whole health care system.