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The Future for The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality


Research matters. An agency that I fought to save many years ago is at risk again, and Congress must make a move to save it.

I had just been sworn into the U.S. Senate in 1995, when I first found out that the The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) – then known as the Agency for HealthCare Policy and Research (AHCPR) – was on the chopping block. I was still unpacking boxes and learning my way around the Senate halls when my good friend and teacher Uwe Reinhardt of Princeton came to me with an urgent request. He reported the federal agency responsible for funding and conducting health services research was in danger of being eliminated in the 1996 Congressional budget. The AHCPR, which had been renamed and reorganized just six years prior with strong bipartisan support and a revised mission, had fallen out of favor with several influential members of the House Budget Committee.

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