A story on GenomeWeb yesterday takes a close look at the Baucus-Conrad Comparative Effectiveness Bill and notes that the influence of personalized medicine that we’ve flagged as a trend in 2009 has shown up in this year’s verison of the bill as
language specifying research approaches such as “molecularly informed trials” and “genetic and molecular sub-typing.”
This year’s version of the bill also
includes more emphasis on involvement with the diagnostics community and calls for an expert in genomics to serve on a methodology committee.
In addition to a focus on personalized medicine, the changes to Baucus’ bill incorporate another idea from Sen. Kyl’s amendment in April – adding some hurdles before CER results could be used (by CMS) for coverage decisions.
Even so, the bill continues to meet procedural impediments and substantive objections, resisting Baucus’ efforts to re-brand the concept.
