Out of the distribution of the hundreds of billions President Obama has signed into law as part of the ’09 Recovery & Reinvestment Act, it’s easy to overlook the relatively “minor” earmarks as part of this stimulus package with respect to his commitment to healthcare reform. One of those areas is in pharmaceutical research. However, it probably isn’t what you’re thinking when you hear that word.

Via his healthacare stimulus package, Obama has asked for researchers to study the effectiveness of drugs after they have gained approval by the FDA. Strictly speaking, comparative effectiveness research, as it’s called, is the study of utilization patterns, costs due to procurement, costs due to adverse effects, insurance coverage, and expected outcomes among drugs in certain classes. This data compares drugs in the same pharmacologic classes to find the most economically efficient and medically effective ones. It’s just another tool to examine the effect of a major source of the cost of healthcare today — the pharmaceutical industry. | LINK

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