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...Some of this is transparent posturing, but there are legitimate concerns about politicians' deciding when treatments are effective enough - or, more controversially, cost-effective enough - to be reimbursable. Medical knowledge is constantly evolving, and treatments that seem to lack solid evidence today might seem indispensable tomorrow. Wasteful tests and procedures don't come with labels marked "wasteful," and most patients and providers genuinely believe the care they're getting and giving is necessary. Comprehensive studies of what works can be slow, expensive and inconclusive. Even Orszag admits the savings from cutting out unneeded care would take a decade to materialize...
...evidence-based medicine is hard to practice without evidence. There are studies showing that generic and over-the-counter drugs for hypertension, heartburn and psychosis are often just as effective as costlier brand-name alternatives; that stents can work miracles when inserted quickly after heart attacks but don't seem to help much as preventive measures; that the areas with the most hospital beds, imaging machines and specialists spend the most on excess hospital stays, MRIs and specialty care. But the big money in medical research goes to testing new drugs and cutting-edge technologies, not to comparing existing treatments...
...most modern democratic standards, Silvio Berlusconi's wild 15-year political ride would seem closer than ever to crashing. The 72-year-old Italian Prime Minister is facing a swirl of questions linked to his personal life, including the latest allegations that a high-paid escort stayed with him at his Rome residence the night of Nov. 4 as results were coming in of Barack Obama's election victory. But as damning as the news may appear, it is still too early to predict the demise of the billionaire TV tycoon, who rose to power in 1994 with an often...
...attack on Google is seen by some as an attempt to divert criticism from the controversy over filtering software. "It doesn't seem like a coincidence that [the attack on Google] comes amid mounting criticism of Green Dam, whose ostensible purpose is to block porn," says Rebecca MacKinnon, a former Beijing bureau chief for CNN who is writing a book about the Internet in China. "Now they're trying to show what a bad job Google does in protecting China's children...
...That may not seem all that surprising for such a closed society as North Korea's, now locked in a heated standoff with the West over both its nuclear-weapons program and its jailing of two U.S. reporters. But even amid those tensions, the Hermit Kingdom is trying to stimulate its dire economic fortunes by slowly opening its economy to foreign business - and the lack of convenient cell-phone service has emerged as a major irritant, especially for the hundreds of Chinese firms active there, which make up the largest group of foreign investors. Those investors now actually have...