Starting in October 1, 2012 employers will pay $1 per participant on your health plan per year to fund Comparative Effectiveness Research. The dollars will go to the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Trust Fund and will fund a new organization call the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI). This amount will increase to $2 per participant per year in 2013.
The idea behind the fee or tax is that these dollars will go to conduct comparative effectiveness research of various medical interventions and publicly disseminate them. Whether or not this fee will go to fund decisions on your personal healthcare is yet to be seen.
