Lobbyists Impact Comparative Effectiveness Research
August 19th, 2010 | No Comments | Source: Washington PostThe Affordable Care Act has catapulted the US Preventive Services Task Force from an obscure agency which produced unenforceable guidelines about screening and preventive services into one whose recommendations directly impact reimbursement.
The health reform law requires insurers to pay in full for services receiving an A or B recommendation from the Task Force. The flip-side is that insurers may not have to pay at all for services that are not recommended by the Task Force. As a result, the Task Force’ new best friends include lobbyists and disease advocates who want their priorities – things like screening for Alzheimer’s disease, HIV and diabetes or HIV – to get covered.
The American Diabetes Association, for example, is advocating that insurers be required to cover a broader population than current Task Force recommendations suggest. Current recommendations are that only patients with high blood pressure should be screened.
The HIV Medicine Association has made a similar argument to the Task Force. It claims that a key reason why 20% of people infected with HIV are unaware of that fact is because most insurers don’t cover the costs of testing.
“If you want to be evidence-based, lobbying doesn’t fit,” Ned Calonge, the chairman of the Task Force told the Washington Post. “My charge to members would be to stay true to the methods and the evidence.”
The Task Force, by the way, is the same one that caused a stir before the 2008 presidential election when it recommended that women should start receiving screening mammograms at the age of 50, rather than 40. That move was eventually trumped by an amendment to the Affordable Care Act which required insurers to cover mammograms for women in their 40s.




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White’s group identified 24 articles and correspondences with editors that had either been produced with support from grants that Parke-Davis or by Parke-Davis ghostwriters.
Throckmorton, a PhD, teaches psychology at Christian-oriented Grove City College in Pennsylvania. He once was the president of the American Mental Health Counselors Association.
The APA has 150,000 members. Its new guidelines call for counselors to assure clients that homosexuality is not an illness and that gay people can lead happy, productive lives. Counselors are also supposed to emphasize that therapy can’t change sexual orientation.




