It's not just the blogosphere that's agog about some of the pretty astonishing things being said about comparative effectiveness. Steven Pearlstein's Washington Post column debunks some of the wild arguments being made against the comparative effectiveness and health IT provisions in the stimulus bill. Pearlstein provides an insightful look at how the controversy got started and addresses the alarmist rhetoric. He rightly points out:

There's nothing particularly new about comparative effectiveness research—the National Institutes of Health, along with the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, have been doing it for years, with a budget last year of about $335 million....nearly all experts agree (comparative effectiveness research) is a necessary first step to reforming a broken health-care system.

Pearlstein punches holes in the argument that the research would lead to denial of appropriate care and makes the case that our health system would be, well, healthier if we had better information on what works and what doesn't:

And there is no reason we cannot set up reasonable procedures, overseen by independent health professionals, to protect patients who can demonstrate a special need for a treatment that is not normally cost-effective.

...(O)urs is an economy that is sinking under the weight of a health-care system that costs twice as much as any in the world while delivering poorer health outcomes. The cost of health care has crippled entire industries, disadvantaged our companies in international competition and brought millions of families into bankruptcy. Worst of all, in denying vital medical services to the 40 million Americans without health insurance, we engage in the most immoral kind of medical rationing imaginable—rationing by the ability to pay.

By the way, in this blog's Thursday post about comparative effectiveness and partisanship, we asked, "Where is Judd Gregg?" An hour or two later, we found out...