[sahuaro]

Some further thoughts, venting and more serious:
Since Deyo is objecting to defibrillators, is he going to lobby to recall Cheney's? (had to get that one off my chest, pun intended)
More seriously: Dr. Deyo is pretending to be Dudley Doright but in actuality he belongs to a group which represents private insurance and whose aim is to reduce costs for insurance companies.
Ran the article by my husband who is a physician and although he in no way supports Deyo, he did point out that the clinical trials by definition excluded people over 60 so that there were no data to present to Medicare for that population. I asked him if European data would be acceptable to Medicare and he said no--American patients and American controls. He also said that stents were originally disallowed by Medicare as not being superior to angioplasty but continued research showing less mortality and continued pressure led to Medicare's reversing its decision. He also pointed out--and this is very depressing--that as far as Medicare is concerned there is a big difference between mortality and morbidity (e.g, the improved quality of life for ADR recipients) and that Medicare will not readily agree to put out the money to increase quality of life.