Government-performed comparative drug studies are bad because the results not only affect Medicare but the private market as well, writes American Enterprise Institute fellow Scott Gottlieb in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal. A provision for a new federal center to study the economics of drug choices (part of the State Children's Health Insurance Program) will give misleading results and the data will not be transparent, argues Gottlieb, drawing on past studies such as the Women's Health Initiative, Allhat, and Catie as proof.
Blogger Mark Hoofnagle responds that these studies were only federally funded -- as is much of US research -- and sometimes released initial results because of risks associated with the drugs, not to save the government money. "Does this guy even understand that the researchers that perform these studies don't sit around thinking, 'I work for the government … and the government is all about saving government money for the government,'" writes Hoofnagle.