Why Does Mike Huckabee Want Medicare to Waste Money?

What is comparative-effectiveness review? There are two answers to this question. The right answer, and Mike Huckabee’s answer.

The right answer is that comparative-effectiveness review is a fancy term for studies that test multiple drugs or treatments against one another to see which one works best — studies, in other words, that compare them for effectiveness. That way, when doctors go to prescribe something for you, they’re prescribing the thing that’ll do the most to help you at the lowest cost. My hunch is that most patients think comparative-effectiveness review is already how medicine works, and would be dismayed to learn how little good evidence there is behind what their doctor is telling them.

Mike Huckabee’s answer is that comparative-effectiveness review is the seed from which “the poisonous tree of death panels will grow,” which is, if not a sensical image, at least a vivid one. CER will become our version of Britain’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, which in Huckabee’s telling, “decides who lives and who dies based on age and cost of treatment.”