The Policy Workshop

Report: Pharmaceutical tariffs will upend prices, supply - Competitive Enterprise Institute A new CEI report takes a close look at the complex, worldwide pharmaceutical supply chain to anticipate how forthcoming Trump tariffs might increase prices and cause supply problems. “The Trump administration’s economic and trade policies will disrupt pharmaceutical manufacturing, causing unpred...

in is free, right? Not exactly, as the The Fraser Institute explains in a newly-released analysis. File this under "there's no such thing as a free lunch" -- nor a "free" healthcare system.

The Price of Public Health Care Insurance, 2025 Study September 9, 2025 | EST. READ TIME 1 MIN. Health-care costs for typical Canadian family will reach over $19,000 this year By: Nadeem Esmail, Nathaniel Li and Milagros Palacios Share Link Copied! The Price of Public Health Care Insurance, 2025Canadians often misunderstand the true cost of our p...

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

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

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/

Gary and Aldona Robbins Scholarship Established for Economic Education | The Fund for American Studies 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...

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."

Opinion | Trump’s Debate Chance on Drug Prices NATO and Operation Warp Speed show the path to supporting medical innovation.

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:

Sustainable Financing of Healthcare Systems in Aging Societies 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,…

www.progressivepolicy.org

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."

www.progressivepolicy.org

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

The Price of Ignorance | Drugwonks 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.