News — At The Edge — 5/11
There are positive changes coming — economics, drug prices, 3D organ printing — just not soon enough for many in need.
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Ray Dalio says MMT is a lot closer to happening than you might think —
“[Founder] the world’s largest hedge fund, says something like Modern Monetary Theory (MMT)…could actually happen…[since] the effective printing of money by governments, will be ‘inevitable’…because monetary policy and fiscal policy alone will not be able to pull the economy out of the next downturn….
[He] also predicts the US will also have 0% interest rates in the future as the country follows the path of Japan and Europe….
[The] idea of MMT is that governments can fund an extraordinary expansion of programs without harming the economy….’These tools have the power to do real good…[or] real harm if not used responsibly….
[He] voiced his support of guaranteed jobs in a recession…[as] ‘policies that provide printed money to spenders with incentives for them to spend it…[but] will undoubtedly be politically controversial’….
[T]he idea of printing money is not so different from the Fed’s policy of ‘quantitative easing’ during the financial crisis…according to former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke…[saying] ‘to lend to a bank, we simply use the computer to mark up the size of the account that they have with the Fed…[and] more akin to printing money than [borrowing]’….
Dalio explicitly disagreed with…idea that inflation was driven primarily by the pricing power of corporations….[rather] largely driven by the supply and demand of labor and commodities.” https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/aoc-endorsred-mmt-could-happen-ray-dalio-2019-5-1028162987
Drugmakers ordered to list medication prices in TV ads —
“[Finally] regulations that will require drug companies to disclose list prices of medications costing more than $35 for a month’s supply…in text toward the end of commercials, when potential side effects are disclosed…perhaps as early as the summer….
[Hope is] patients armed with prices will start discussing affordability with their doctors, and gradually…put pressure on drugmakers to keep costs in check….
According to the latest government figures, the 10 most commonly advertised drugs have prices ranging from $488 to $16,938 per month or for a usual course of therapy.
The disclosure requirement will not apply to print or radio ads…[but] covers all brand name drugs covered by Medicare and Medicaid, which is nearly all medications. ‘Over $4 billion of pharma spend is in TV ads….
[Unfortunately] enforcement…will rely on drug companies suing each other over violations….
[Still] 1 in 3 Americans said they haven’t taken medications as prescribed because of costs….
[The] copays that patients face are often based on list prices. And many people who have high-deductible insurance plans pay list prices for medications because their insurance doesn’t start covering until patients have spent several thousand dollars of their own money.
In other economically advanced countries, governments negotiate drug prices to keep medications more affordable for patients.” https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/drugmakers-ordered-to-list-medication-prices-in-tv-ads/ar-AAB5R3Y?ocid=spartandhp
Bioengineers clear major hurdle on path to 3-D printing replacement organs —
“[Technique] to create exquisitely entangled vascular networks that mimic the body’s natural passageways for blood, air, lymph and other vital fluids…[to] deliver oxygen to surrounding blood vessels…[plus] experiments to implant bioprinted constructs containing liver cells into mice….
’One of the biggest road blocks to generating functional tissue replacements has been…complex vasculature that can supply nutrients to densely populated tissues…[and] contain independent vascular networks — like the airways and blood vessels of the lung or the bile ducts and blood vessels in the liver. These interpenetrating networks are physically and biochemically entangled, and the architecture itself is intimately related to tissue function.
Ours is the first bioprinting technology that addresses the challenge of multivascularization in a direct and comprehensive way’….
[B]y allowing doctors to print replacement organs from a patient’s own cells…ready supply of functional organs could one day be deployed to treat millions of patients worldwide. ‘We envision bioprinting becoming a major component of medicine within the next two decades….
The liver is especially interesting because it performs a mind-boggling 500 functions, likely second only to the brain…[and] there is currently no machine or therapy that can replace all its functions when it fails….
[T]he team created a new open-source bio-printing technology dubbed the ‘stereo-lithography apparatus for tissue engineering’….
Tests of the lung-mimicking structure showed that the tissues were sturdy enough to avoid bursting during blood flow and pulsatile ‘breathing,’ a rhythmic intake and outflow of air that simulated the pressures and frequencies of human breathing. Tests found that red blood cells could take up oxygen as they flowed through a network of blood vessels surrounding the ‘breathing’ air sac….
[In] therapeutic implants for liver disease, the team 3-D printed tissues, loaded them with primary liver cells and implanted them into mice…[with] separate compartments for blood vessels and liver cells….Tests showed that the liver cells survived the implantation….
’With the addition of multivascular and intravascular structure, we’re introducing an extensive set of design freedoms for engineering living tissue’….
[Note] all source data…[and] 3-D printable files needed to build the stereo-lithography printing apparatus are available, as are the design files for printing each of the hydrogels used.” https://medicalxpress.com/news/2019-05-bioengineers-major-hurdle-path-d.html
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Doc Huston
