WSJ Op-Ed: The NIH Is Already Politicized

by Chris Jacobs

 

Below please find excerpts from my op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal, highlighting a series of studies on single-payer—several conducted with taxpayer dollars—as evidence of NIH funds being used for politicized (not to mention shoddy) research…

Reports that the Trump administration may exercise greater control over National Institutes of Health grants has sparked outrage from the public-health clerisy. But studies by Yale researchers illustrate the need for more oversight of NIH grants. Consider their claim that a single-payer healthcare bill by Sen. Bernie Sanders would lower national health spending….

Last month the researchers updated their study, replete with the same scorekeeping tricks. They ignored the effect of eliminating cost-sharing for three-fourths of the population, again relying on their distortion of the 2017 paper. They claimed that data limitations in the national health expenditure accounts prevented them from estimating the cost of new vision and hearing benefits. They again omitted Mr. Sanders’s proposed expansion of long-term care, despite the availability of reliable spending data.

Most glaring is their assumption that implementing single payer would reduce healthcare fraud by 8% this year, up from 4% in their 2020 paper. This change increased single payer’s assumed savings by about $150 billion. Since they cited no new evidence to justify the change, it is worth asking whether the authors manipulated their assumptions so that purported savings from single payer would exceed $1 trillion annually. These factors would eliminate most if not all of single payer’s supposed savings….

Did the NIH fund this latest study? We don’t know, as Ms. Galvani and Yale declined several requests to comment. But the NIH’s prior support of her research, combined with the study’s methodological flaws, is enough to conclude that the grant-making system is ripe for reform.

https://juniperresearchgroup.substack.com/p/my-wsj-op-ed-the-nih-is-already-politicized