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 forHealth andHumanServices that would terminate funding for AHRQ. That happened in 2012 and AHRQ survived. What’s your take onhowyou’re in the same place again, andwhatdoyou seeas theway forward? DRKRONICK: My job as director is to try to explainasclearlyas I can theworkwedoand the value of that work. The appropriated budgetof theagency is about 1/100thof 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.