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.

By all accounts infection rates have ebbed. But were we good or were we lucky?

Dr. Ming Lin, and healthcare providers like him, are fighting to take back control of medicine from private equity firms that are gobbling up practices and facilities. Should Wall Street make life-and-death decisions based on the bottom line?

The principal threat to economic stability currently is the overhang of debt, both private and public.

Evidence sharply contradicts PhRMA’s contention that its member companies need unregulated drug prices to generate profits that they then reinvest in drug innovation.

Researchers find that the nation had become an outlier among other rich countries in mortality rates long before the pandemic – and that Americans are dying younger than their peers abroad.

In a harrowing new book, scholar Laura Katz Olson pulls back the curtain on a shadowy Wall Street threat that is taking over health care companies – and preying on human lives.

As women’s rights to make reproductive choices come under assault, historian John M. Riddle argues that abortion has been far more essential to human history than you might imagine.

An interview with INET Global Commissioner Winnie Byanyima

Former health insurance executive turned whistleblower and investigative journalist Wendell Potter discusses the many ways in which the private health insurance system of the US is not serving anyone well except the insurance companies’ owners

It’s time to prioritize mental well-being to avoid far-reaching economic and social consequences.

An interview with Dr. Ibrahim Mayaki, CEO of the African Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD)

An interview with John Nkengasong, Director of Africa CDC, about how a coordinated response to COVID-19 in Africa has proven to be effective

Doctors and medical experts say private equity firms and profiteering corporations are putting American lives at risk and compromising the practice of medicine.

In this interview, Dr. Folashadé Soulé and Dr. Camilla Toulmin speak with Pr. Mzukisi Qobo. Pr Qobo is the Head of the Wits School of Governance, University of Witwatersrand, South Africa.

Dr. Ming Lin complained about Covid-19 safety measures at his hospital. He got fired because a giant Wall Street firm called the shots.

In this interview, Dr. Folashadé Soulé and Dr. Camilla Toulmin discuss with Nanjala Nyabola, a writer and researcher based in Nairobi, Kenya. Nanjala’s work focuses on the intersection between technology, media, and society. She is currently the Director of Advox, the digital rights programme at Global Voices. Nanjala has held numerous research associate positions including with the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), the Oxford Internet Institute (OII), and other institutions, while also working as a research lead for several projects on human rights broadly and digital rights specifically around the world.

“Just learn to live with it” policies subject children to an experiment with a systemic disease that does serious and lasting damage, warns former NASA and DARPA technologist

If libertarians wish to maintain their self-centered fixation on their own freedoms without considering others, let them do so — in indefinite quarantine from the rest of us.

Lori Wallach, of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, and Jayati Ghosh, economics professor at UMass Amherst, discuss how first world countries are protecting pharma companies’ exorbitant profits, at the expense of vaccinating people living in the Global South and thereby also endangering everyone in the world.

Dr Kandeh Yumkella is a development economist, founder and CEO of The Energy Nexus Network (TENN), a regional hub for sustainable energy solutions and serves as a Member of Parliament in Sierra Leone. Previously Dr Yumkella served as Under-Secretary-General and Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Sustainable Energy for All and founding chief executive officer for the Sustainable Energy for All (SE4All) Initiative (2013–2015). He also served as Director-General of the UN Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO, 2005–2013), mobilising global consensus for SDG7 and 9. He is a member of the High-Level Group of the Africa-Europe Foundation, co-chair of the Africa Europe Foundation Strategy Group on Energy, and member of various international advisory bodies, boards, and commissions.

An excerpt from the just released book, The Outlier, by Kai Bird

The world won’t emerge from the pandemic until the pandemic is controlled everywhere, and this is a special concern because of the new mutations that are likely to arise where the disease is running its course. So too, the world won’t have a robust economic recovery until at least most of the world is on the course to prosperity. Global growth is far more muted now than then, and inward-looking policies in some of the nations where growth has been restored have resulted in an increase in their trade surplus, attenuating the global impact of their recovery.

Our world is full of fault lines—growing inequality in income and opportunity; systemic racism; health and economic crises from a global pandemic; mistrust of experts; the existential threat of climate change; deep threats to employment in a digital economy with robotics on the rise. These fundamental problems and others like them stem from a common crisis in values.

By Stefano Sannino Secretary-General, European External Action Service (EEAS), Jutta Urpilainen EU Commissioner for International Partnerships, European Commission, Rohinton P. Medhora President, The Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), Andrew Michael Spence Nobel Laureate of Economics, Co-Chair, Commission on Global Economic Transformation, Jayati Ghosh Professor of Economics, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Andrea Renda (moderator) Senior Research Fellow, Head of GRID Unit, CEPS

Restoring faith in governance and public action is itself a public good that would prepare us for a whole myriad of challenges on the horizon

As new coronavirus cases surge across India, calls are growing louder for wealthy countries to loosen intellectual property restrictions

School re-opening push based on outdated science is poorly timed in face of coronavirus resurgence

INET’s Commission on Global Economic Transformation - Interim Report on the Global Response to the Pandemic

“We’re building a data system, because you can’t really manage a city if you don’t know who’s there and what’s in it.”

“Equitable COVID19 vaccine distribution is a very important issue of global solidarity”

Capacity, Scale, and Control

Expert warns that it could be a race against the clock as the fast-spreading B117 variant picks up steam in the U.S.

Expert warns that without more robust abatement measures and testing, the virus could rage until mid-2022.

Warnings of “corruption and incompetence coming together,” as economists William Lazonick and Öner Tulum study the race to end the pandemic.

In this interview, Folashadé Soulé and Camilla Toulmin speak with Carl Manlan, the Chief Operating Officer of the Ecobank Foundation - responsible for Ecobank’s social impact engagement with the communities in which the bank operates in Africa – on the role of African philanthropy and corporate social responsibility in the response to COVID-19 on the continent.

Targeted Measures and Subsidies for Cost Effective COVID-19 Abatement

Dr. Ming Lin spoke out about Covid safety at his hospital and was fired. He’s fighting back against a system that put profits over human life.

Amid debates over costs—and profits—from a coronavirus vaccine, a new study shows that taxpayers have been footing the bill for every new drug approved between 2010 and 2019

Amid debates over costs—and profits—from a coronavirus vaccine, a new study shows that taxpayers have been footing the bill for every new drug approved between 2010 and 2019

During this interview, Professor Kako Nubukpo, Dean of the Faculty of Economics at the University of Lomé, Togo and former Minister of Prospective and Evaluation of Public Policy of Togo considers the economic and social impact of the COVID-19 crisis and its repercussions on monetary policy and fiscal reforms underway in West and Central Africa today.

Dans le cadre de cet entretien, Pr Kako Nubukpo, Doyen de la Faculté des Sciences Economiques et de Gestion (FASEG) de l’Université de Lomé au Togo, et ancien Ministre de la Prospective et de l’Evaluation des politiques publiques du Togo, revient sur l’impact économique et social de la crise du COVID-19 au Togo et sur ses répercussions sur les politiques économiques dont les réformes monétaires et fiscales en cours en Afrique de l’Ouest et Centrale.

The rise of the Knowledge Based Economy and subsequent Data Driven Economy has created a new world in which the basis of wealth and power is derived from control of these intangible assets, alongside creating a new kind of social and political space in which both our public and private spheres are technologically reshaped. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated these transformations that permeate our world and has amplified their effects.

While policymakers around the world are in fire-fighting mode, trying to keep the economies in their charge running and the mysterious pandemic under control, the global terrain beneath our feet is shifting. Which countries will emerge as winners and losers in the new global landscape?

Chioma Agwuegbo of TechHer Nigeria, talks to Folashadé Soulé and Herbert Mba Aki about how the pandemic is impacting young people in Nigeria, especially young women, and how African youth are tackling the crisis.

When people recognize just how dangerous covid is, they worry more about the economy

In this conversation with Folashadé Soulé and Camilla Toulmin, Pr Njuguna Ndung’u, a Kenyan economist, Director of the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC), a pan-African organization devoted to the advancement of economic policy research and training in sub-Saharan Africa, and former Governor of the Central Bank of Kenya (2007-2015) analyses how the pandemic creates more fragility in African economies, but also how reforms could be implemented during this crisis; and the urgent need for investment in strong health institutional capacities

The success of projects for pandemic preparedness and response depends on the strength of government-business collaborations.

As the world economy seeks to emerge from the deep recession caused by the pandemic, economic nationalism and isolationism are on the rise. Yet the better response to lower growth and worsening inequality could involve globally-coordinated policy responses that focus on broad based, sustainable economic growth. Now more than ever it is time for a new global economic policy paradigm that can facilitate a strong recovery.

Gilead’s shareholders want exorbitant profits from Remdesivir, even though it was the public that enabled its development.

As protests erupt on the streets of America and the world, current power structures no longer feel tenable. Can this popular uprising break the neoliberal grip on the state and create lasting structural change that will empower the disenfranchised?

In this conversation with Folashadé Soulé and Camilla Toulmin, Pr Takyiwaa Manuh analyses how the pandemic has disproportionately affected women at different levels especially in Ghana, and describes why governments need to focus more strongly on the gendered impacts of COVID-19 in both their sanitary and economic response.

In March the US government authorized the largest domestic bailout in history. Who were the real winners and losers of this bailout? Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Jesse Eisinger has been following the money.

Entretien avec Pr Felwine Sarr, Professeur Titulaire des Universités et agrégé en économie à l’Université Gaston Berger de Saint-Louis au Sénégal, pour la série d’INET sur COVID-19 et l’Afrique

An interview with Professor Felwine Sarr, Professor of Economics at the Université Gaston Berger of Saint-Louis in Senegal, for INET’s series on COVID-19 and Africa

An interview with Dr Fatima Denton, Director of the United Nations University – Institute for Natural Resources in Africa, for INET’s series on COVID-19 and Africa

An interview with Pr Benno Ndulu, the former Governor of the Bank of Tanzania, for INET’s series on COVID-19 and Africa

An introduction to a series of interviews conducted by Dr. Dr. Folashadé Soulé and Dr. Camilla Toulmin in support of INET’s Commission on Global Economic Transformation (CGET)

Abstract, “basic science” research is essential to drug discovery. It is also largely funded by the public sector.

Technology has played a central role in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. But that has come with increased risks to privacy. How do we balance our needs for safety, convenience and privacy in the wake of this crisis?

The world is on edge at the prospect of a resurgent wave of infections. Models and speculation are rife, but facts remain scarce, which is why the events in Wisconsin on April 7, and their eventual impact, are so important.

The economic and social costs of the global lockdown have been astronomical but as governments look to begin the process of reopening economies it will be critical to develop strategies that balance both the health and economic risks of the pandemic.

John Ruskin helps shed light on what it means to have an economy that demands we die for it

The COVID-19 pandemic has thrust us into a new reality, and any course we set now will have huge and lasting repercussions on public health and the economy.

Developing countries, many of which appear not to have felt the health effects of COVID to the same extent as Europe and the US, are nonetheless facing severe economic effects as the pandemic pushes the global economy into a recession.

Evidence shows pharmaceutical companies won’t stop price-gouging and risking American lives for financial gain in this time of crises – unless we force them.

With the COVID-19 death toll rising, we should question the wisdom and morality of an IP system that silently condemns millions of human beings to suffering and death every year.

Researchers have shown that the financial and economic impacts of denying women abortion care can last years

Contrary to pharmaceutical company claims, revenue from high insulin prices are going to shareholders, not R&D

This paper considers the relationship between profits realized from higher insulin list prices, pharmaceutical innovation, and the financial structures of the three dominant insulin manufacturing companies, which set list prices.

A call to action for a world economy in crisis

IMPORTANT: Due to growing concerns around the coronavirus, the INET Conference, as well as these workshops will be postponed. Applicants will soon be provided further information.

The scale of firm exposure to the coronavirus is unprecedented by earlier outbreaks, spans all major economies and is pervasive across all industries

As Covid-19 spreads globally in the first quarter of 2020, this paper finds that firms’ primary concerns relate to the collapse of demand, increased uncertainty, and disruption in supply chains

As we face a coronavirus-induced health and economic crisis of uncertain duration, policy makers should be particularly concerned about private equity’s heightened use of debt to buy out healthcare providers and take them private, with no regulatory oversight.

Private equity firms have become major players in the healthcare industry. How has this happened and what are the results?

New research points to critical role of public funding in drug discoveries and development for the last decade

Increased financialization is driving healthcare costs and must be addressed in our nation’s public policy.

How Investor-owned Physician Practices Are Driving up Healthcare Costs

There is not one opioid crisis in America—there are many. And supply-focused measures won’t stop them.

Stigmatizing and relegating an activity to the shadows doesn’t improve anyone’s welfare

Pharmaceutical pushers like Purdue “couldn’t have done their dirty work” without America’s increasingly unbalanced economy

Economic distress in rural areas and opioid exposure in cities are key indicators of overdose deaths

Greg Mankiw says there should be a market for kidneys, but not for paying drug addicts to get sterilized.

Cuba’s entirely state-owned biopharmaceutical industry has been remarkably successful, and can serve as a model for other nations

From the Rust Belt to Rural America, Economic and Social Distress Helped Shape the 2016 US Presidential Election Outcome