Summary: The Inflation Reduction Act allows Medicare to negotiate the price of some drugs. What if this happened at a larger scale? The dismal answer would be “less incentive for pharma to innovate.” Yes, there is no such thing as a free lunch, but what about a cheaper lunch? The Indicator offers an optimistic view and our classroom exercise analyzes these policy ideas that may offer a solution to this “knotty” dilemma between prices and new drugs.
This podcast discusses how many groundbreaking ideas were discovered at bars and how they could potentially foster innovation. Individuals like Mike Andrews have researched this through studying the number of patents filed during Prohibition. Andrews found that innovation is mainly sparked through connections made with other individuals. As seen with the Covid-19 pandemic, individuals are still finding remote ways to foster innovation through technologies like Zoom.