What will it be called? The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute? The Center for Health Outcomes Research? The Center for Comparative Effectiveness Research?

Each of the three major health care reform bills now before Congress contains a major section establishing the U.S.'s first comparative effectiveness research agency. Each bill gives the agency a different name. But each has the same purpose: establishing a permanent home for a field of research that has been the stepchild of the U.S. medical science enterprise for far too long.

It's easy to understand why this data gap exists. Private firms have little financial incentive to sponsor studies that compare their branded products to generics, to branded competitors or to alternative treatment strategies. There's too much to lose in doing a study that might show that the cheaper alternative is equally or more effective.

Academic researchers seeking National Institutes of Health grants also turn up their noses at retrospective outcomes research. What's new or exciting in that? Let the biostatisticians, meta-analyzers and epidemiologists figure out what works best.

But in health care policy circles, the idea of creating a research agency to compare health care outcomes has been percolating since the Republican-dominated Congress of 1994 eliminated the Office of Technology Assessment, which pioneered in health-related comparative research as it did in many other areas of technology evaluation. If health care reform passes, their vision will become reality.

But the similarity of the monikers the various bills give the proposed comparative effectiveness research agency belies some major differences in their proposed structures and rules. How Congress resolves those differences could have a major impact on what gets studied, the quality of the information, how it gets disseminated to the public, and the ability of health insurance payers both public and private to put it to good use.

What follows is a brief rundown of the major similarities and differences in the three bills.