Health

Dr. Victor Gurewich, a researcher and Harvard Medical School faculty member since 1965, discovered a breakthrough drug treatment for heart attacks and strokes with the potential to save millions, but institutional resistance and a U.S. healthcare system that puts profits over patients are keeping it out of reach.

Medicare negotiators need to have a deep understanding - both theoretical and empirical - of the learning processes involved in developing a drug to negotiate a price that is fair.

Medicare Needs a Perspective on “Collective and Cumulative Learning” in Inflation Reduction Act Negotiations

The IRA has the potential to rectify the imbalance between public benefit and private incentives

Increasing evidence that the IRA is probably not harming pharmaceutical innovation.

Sensitivity of investment and valuation to drug price indices and market conditions

Dr. Phillip Alvelda tells INET’s Lynn Parramore about persistent political and public health failures exposing us to devastating diseases, while vastly underestimating their long-term health effects.

In a candid discussion with INET’s Lynn Parramore, Dr. Phillip Alvelda highlights the imminent dangers of long COVID, criticizing governments and health agencies for ongoing preventable suffering and deaths. *This is Part 2 of a two-part interview.

Stuck in a fog of misleading narratives, most of us don’t see the true extent of COVID’s persisting—and intensifying—threats. INET’s Lynn Parramore talks to Dr. Phillip Alvelda about the dangers we’re missing and the failures of public health agencies to inform and protect us. *This is Part 1 of a two-part interview.

Experts are clear that working into old age often threatens the health and well-being of U.S. seniors.

The development of COVID-19 vaccines within a year of the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 was an unprecedented triumph of scientific research that saved millions of lives. In contrast, the lack of global coordination to manage intellectual property, technology transfer, production, financing, and distribution of vaccines led to excess deaths and losses in economic output.

Programs for expedited review may be preferentially reducing the development costs for conditions with lesser disease burden, potentially making investments in addressing the most significant disease burdens even less appealing and exacerbating the market failure further.

Industry lobbyists vehemently oppose Medicare drug price negotiations. However, physician-scientist Fred Ledley and economist William Lazonick debunk their arguments.

The “maximum fair price” for a drug must not only be equitable to those with unmet medical needs who may benefit from the use of the drug but also provide equitable returns on both public and private sector investments.

The empirical analysis of public sector investments and the health value created by the drugs selected for Medicare price negotiations provides a cost basis for the assessment of the maximum fair price.