The final outrage

I've pretty much given up responding trying to parse out specific items from the endless torrent of vileness and lies, but I have to say something about this. From CBS News (yes, Bari doesn't seem to have gotten her grimy little hands on the web site quite yet): 

The Trump administration has effectively shut down most of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's activities, closing the spigot on federal funding estimated to have saved thousands of lives and billions of dollars over the past 27 years by improving medical practice.

In a July 15 letter, the small Department of Health and Human Services agency known as AHRQ told researchers it was halting at least 104 grants, many aimed at improving patient safety. Although Congress appropriated $345 million for AHRQ for this fiscal year, the agency has spent less than $15 million on grants and hasn't issued a new one in over a year, according to a review of federal records. About 75% of agency staffers have been fired or quit since President Donald Trump took office last year, according to HHS.

It may seem a mystery why they are doing this. AHRQ funded a few kinds of studies, but one important focus has been identifying procedures or medications that are used inappropriately, in situations in which they aren't effective, or the risk and costs outweigh the benefits. You would think Bobby Brainworm would be all for this. But here's a little bit of history that will help explain it. 

The predecessor of AHRQ was called the Agency for Healthcare Policy and Research, established in 1989. In 1985 AHPR issued findings that widely performed, and very expensive surgeries for low back pain were ineffective. This was, in fact true. However, the news understandably was not welcomed by the surgeons who got obscenely wealthy doing these useless operations, so they raised an uproar with congress, backed of course by their substantial political donations, and tried to get the agency abolished. Congress didn't quite go along, but they did severely cut the agency's funding. In 1999 it was reauthorized under its new name, with less emphasis on clinical practice guidelines. 

Nevertheless, AHRQ's activities were still a threat to the incomes of medical specialists, so you can see why the unabashedly corrupt administration would bow to demands to shut it down. Here's why I took the trouble to write this post. I am a health services researcher. I have been a member of Academy Health, the relevant academic society. My membership has lapsed -- I'm a member of the Academy of Communication in Healthcare and I can't belong to everything -- but I have presented at several of their meetings and of course most of my colleagues are members.  Now they're being put out of business.

I don't know what is going to happen to schools of public health, including my own. They're going to have to find ways to survive in greatly reduced fashion until these lunatics are thrown out of office. But meanwhile it's your friends and family and neighbors who they are killing.