It is really appalling to know that though U. S. healthcare is aware of the fact that comparing medical treatments is the finest way to know the best and the cheapest, yet such researches have not been conducted lately.

Comparative Effectiveness research is done either by noncommercial enterprises or by the academic institutions. Less than 20% examine the safety of treatments, according to the researchers’ report in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Dr. Danny McCormick of Harvard Medical School in Boston said, “Most of the comparative effectiveness studies we reviewed simply tested whether medication 'x' is better than medication 'y,' rather than addressing fundamental questions such as: How can we use this medication more effectively? When is this medication better than surgery? Which among two effective approaches is the safest?”.

About 328 studies were chosen by McCormick and Dr. Michael Hochman of the University of Southern California, which appeared in major medical journals that evaluated drugs.

One third of them contrasted a drug to something else. 43% compared one drug to another, while 11% weighed it against a non-drug therapy. Only 2% did analysis of cost-effective medicines and 15% talked of various dosing plans and 19% viewed at the safety.

U. S. President Barack Obama has proposed comparative effectiveness research as one big component, as Congress approved $1.1 billion last year, for the same.