Probing Our Moral Values in Health Care: The Pricing of Specialty Drugs

JAMA: The US House Committee on Appropriations has approved a draft 2016 budget for Health and Human Services that would terminate funding for AHRQ. That happened in 2012 and AHRQ survived. What’s your take on how you’re in the same place again, and what do you see as the way forward? DR KRONICK: My job as director is to try to explain as clearly as I can the work we do and the value of that work. The appropriated budget of the agency is about 1/100th of 1% of national health spending. The return on investment from this 1/100th of 1% is very large, as evidenced by recent reports on quality of care and patient safety. I am confident that if more money were devoted to trying to figure out how to improve the delivery of care, the return would continue to be extremely large.