So the Amendment Wasn't All That Effective

The Cross-Border Biotech Blog reports that a "comparative effectiveness" amendment introduced to the US budget bill was rejected with a 44-54 vote. This amendment, introduced by Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ), would have prohibited federal healthcare programs from using data from comparative effectiveness research to deny treatment coverage and made sure that comparative effectiveness research accounts for advances in genomics and personalized medicine as well as treatment response and preference. The blogger, Jeremy Grushcow, adds that it's the first part of the amendment that likely led to its failure and that "ultimately, there may be some treatments that are genuinely less effective than others in comparable populations. As a patient and as a taxpayer, I'd like to know what those are and avoid taking or paying for them."