Health Policy and Public Trust
Published In: JAMA, Journal of Medical Association, v. 300, no. 2, July 9, 2008, p. 211-213
Posted on RAND.org on January 01, 2008
Since this commentary does not have an abstract, we have provided the first paragraph of the document: Nearly every US newspaper on almost every day will include stories about health care in the United States. Many of these stories focus on the intersection of business or professional entities and trust. Can a study be trusted that compared drug A to a placebo or to drug B? Should research assessing the performance of one device compared with another be given credence? However, journalists rarely ask if research that examines the function and structure of the health care system with the goal of changing health policy should be believed.
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