Is Britain's NICE a good or poor model for U.S.?

Senator Max Baucus (D-MT) has proposed a healthcare reform package that includes something called the Health Care Comparative Effectiveness Research Institute, clearly modeled after Britain's National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE). But will this model work? Over at FiercePharma, Robert Goldberg discusses the pros and cons of comparative effectiveness research, and whether it will save us money or hurt patients by generalizing medicine too much. FiercePharma [1]