The Policy Workshop

01/28/2025

A humorous but accurate sketch about pharmacy benefits managers (aka PBMs).

Cigna is not happy 😢https://www.axios.com/2024/09/17/express-scripts-sues-ftc-over-report-about-pharmacy-benefit-managers

07/09/2024

The Gary and Aldona Robbins Scholarship at TFAS was established in 2024 to honor the work of a husband and wife who together made outstanding contributions to the field of economic policy.

About the Robbins Family

Gary Robbins served as a senior tax economist and analyst at the Department of the Treasury in the 1970s and 1980s, where he created the tax model used to forecast the budget effects of proposed tax changes. There he began work on a database for a hoped-for model that could accurately predict the economic effects of tax changes and the resulting impact on revenue and the budget, called dynamic scoring. The task was widely regarded by most of the tax policy community as too difficult for use in policy analysis.

Aldona Robbins, who passed away on May 25, 2024, was an economist at the Department of Labor and later the Senior Economist in the Office of Economic Policy at the Department of the Treasury. Her Treasury work in the fields of Social Security and Medicare led to significant improvements in the clarity and content of the annual reports of the Trustees of the Social Security Trust Funds, which can serve as a guide toward a permanent solution to the program’s ever-recurring financial instability. She wrote a pamphlet entitled “The ABCs of Social Security: Basic Questions and Answers About the Retirement Program” to explain the program to the layman.

After leaving Treasury to found Fiscal Associates, the Robbinses developed a full-blown dynamic scoring, tax policy simulation model. It successfully incorporated the pioneering work on the theory of capital formation by Harvard economist Dale Jorgenson. The model demonstrated the feasibility of dynamic scoring and confounded the skeptics. This model has grown to become the outstanding analytical tool of the Tax Foundation. Its success has spurred other researchers to take the dynamic plunge, and it has altered the way that Congress and fiscal policy analysts assess the cost and efficacy of tax changes. This has made a great contribution to the formulation of pro-growth tax policies.
Continue The Robbinses’ Legacy

To make a gift in memory of Aldona to the Gary and Aldona Robbins Scholarship Fund, please visit TFAS.org/support, select “I wish to designate this gift” and type the Gary and Aldona Robbins Scholarship in the designation field. https://tfas.org/news/gary-and-aldona-robbins-scholarship-established-for-economic-education/

The Gary and Aldona Robbins Scholarship at TFAS was established in 2024 to honor the work of a husband and wife who together made outstanding contributions to the field of economic policy. Upon Aldona’s passing in May, TFAS regent and friend of Aldona, Catherine Barr Windels, donated a generous le...

06/27/2024

Writing in the Wall Street Journal Opinion, Grace-Marie Turner of the Galen Institute looks at price controls and their detrimental impact on , and argues that the issue offers an opportunity for former President Trump to stake out a position that benefits both patients and the American pharmaceutical sector. She writes: "While there has been controversy about the , there is no question that the Trump administration facilitated a remarkable partnership between the private sector and the government unseen since World War II. Officials worked with companies to figure out how government could help clear the way. During the debate, Mr. Trump should contrast his record with Mr. Biden’s approach, which relies on onerous regulations, threats of punitive taxes, and price controls that will stall medical progress. Mr. Trump can present a vision of a government that clears the hurdles the Biden administration has put in the way of private business and the innovation ecosystem."

NATO and Operation Warp Speed show the path to supporting medical innovation.

06/27/2024

As our populations age, are the health care systems of the United States and Europe sustainable in financial terms? The American Council on Germany and the Global Coalition on Aging hosted a video discussion featuring health policy experts Grace-Marie Turner of the Galen Institute and Kristian Niemietz of the Institute of Economic Affairs. Watch at this link:

On May 28, the ACG and the Global Coalition on Aging (GCOA) held a virtual discussion with Grace-Marie Turner, President of the Galen Institute, and Kristian Niemietz,…

01/04/2024

01/04/2024

A new report from the Progressive Policy Institute by authors Robert Popovian, Wayne Winegarden and Michael Mandel "assesses the health and economic benefits of the rapid development of -19 . Using a simple framework of stylized facts, we find that the COVID-19 vaccines saved 2.9 million lives, avoided 12.5 million hospitalizations, and saved $500 billion in hospitalization costs. Importantly, these are conservative estimates, based on the assumption that successfully surviving COVID-19 infection offers protection against future severe outcomes similar to vaccination. Using the same framework, we examine the consequences to individuals of choosing to receive or not receive new COVID-19 boosters, given the continued evolution of the virus. An illustrative calculation shows that the expected 5-year economic losses to an individual from choosing not to receive boosters rises from $654 at age 30 to more than $65,000 at age 75."

12/14/2023

From Drugwonks.com: "Pursuing misguided policies that siphon funding from the groundbreaking medical research happening in the biopharmaceutical industry will have devastating consequences for patients and society." https://drugwonks.com/blog/the-price-of-ignorance?fbclid=IwAR0RPR2ZRTpjtkqt79rtY1t7ZX72K758FTJv1wlBaMvTjbDyn2XiuigQCmc

Default Description | Drugwonks.com is the web log of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest (CMPI), a forum offering rigorous and compelling research on the most critical issues affecting current drug policy.

10/28/2023

Despite claims by opponents, a flawed and misleading study of the impact of the has not been exonerated.

A retracted study claiming the COVID vaccine killed 300,000 Americans has been republished in an anti-vaccine journal, but it's still weak.

04/19/2023

A new release from the Pioneer Institute for Public Policy Research co-authored by Robert Popovian, Wayne Winegarden and William Smith: "A new white paper released today examines the impact of pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) and copay accumulator and maximizer programs on the ability of patients living with multiple sclerosis, cancer, and psoriatic arthritis to access the treatments they need to manage their conditions. Out-of-Pocket Pirates: Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) and the Confiscation of Copayment Assistance Programs leverages real cost data and the average benefit design for an Affordable Care Act-compliant plan to demonstrate the patient health and economic consequences of implementing copay accumulator and maximizer programs."

Learn all about Out-of-Pocket Pirates: Spotlight on Accumulator & Maximizer Programs and other public policy research within News from Pioneer Institute.

03/29/2023

I am looking forward to a great panel on healthcare innovation at the National Review Institute 2023 Ideas Summit in Washington, D.C. With National Review editor Ramesh Ponnuru leading a discussion with Rich Bagger of Christie 55 Solutions and Peter Pitts of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest, attendees are in for a fascinating look at what has made the U.S. the world leader in biomedical innovation, and how we can keep innovative treatments and cures coming in the future. This year’s Summit theme is “Sources of American Strength,” and our pre-eminence in biomedical innovation is a major source of that strength. The Summit will be streamed on the National Review website and on the National Review page as well. The healthcare innovation panel starts at 4:37 p.m. on Thursday, March 30. More information here:

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03/04/2023

A new study from American Enterprise Institute looks at the reasons for the current crisis of the (NHS). Abstract: "The UK National Health Service (NHS), now in its 75th year, has devoted supporters inside and outside the country who admire its egalitarian ethic and public-service orientation. However, the rapid deterioration of its performance in recent years, and especially after the COVID-19 pandemic, is too glaring and dangerous to overlook. A major challenge is the health service’s near-exclusive reliance on political and bureaucratic processes for resources and organizational direction. Free care at the point of service and publicly owned hospitals sustain the NHS’s popularity, but long waits for needed care, even when the services are “free,” harm patients. Neither major political party appears ready to explore systemic reform, but if political conditions create an opening, UK leaders might consider moving the NHS closer to the public-private models found in other European economies, as has been suggested at various points in its history and also recently. The lesson for other countries from the NHS’s ongoing crisis is that full governmental control of medical care brings risks, not just potential and often-overstated rewards."

The UK National Health Service's rapid deterioration of performance in recent years, and especially after the COVID-19 pandemic, is too glaring and dangerous to overlook.

01/23/2023

Are killing young people? "During the Covid pandemic, some of the most comprehensive and clearly reported have been those of Germany’s and biomedicine regulator, the Paul-Ehrlich-Institut (named for its founder, the winner of the 1908 Nobel prize in medicine, not the “Population Bomb” guy). In its final extended report on Covid vaccines, from September, the institute concluded that while shortness of breath, myocarditis and irregular heartbeats occurred more frequently among those recently receiving the mRNA vaccines from -Pfizer and Moderna than in the population at large, significant adverse events such as heart attacks, blood clots in the lungs and brain and a blood disorder that causes bleeding were much less common among the recently vaccinated than the control population. The AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines, both based on modified versions of different viruses, were linked to higher than normal rates of dangerous blood clots and bleeding disorders, but all four vaccines had a much lower incidence of death in the 30 days after vaccination than the rate for the population at large." https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-01-19/why-are-young-people-dying-in-us-and-what-are-the-causes?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTY3NDUwNzEwMCwiZXhwIjoxNjc1MTExOTAwLCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJST1FFT0ZEV0xVNjkwMSIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiIxQkI1OEE2RTQ2NUM0QUU3OUI3RTEyQUQzQ0VFM0ZDNiJ9.SOowTidhgq45XY3vCLn1Shi_mfGnHmJxlOx7QqePMQI

The increase started well before Covid-19 shots arrived, according to mortality data, and has plateaued since.