Our Podcast Returns, The (Price) Fix Is In, Election Homestretch

By Ashley Winstead, Director of Strategic Communications

After a short hiatus, we are thrilled to announce our podcast “Deep Dive With Laura Arnold” is back — this time with an in-depth discussion on a crucial 2020 ballot measure: money bail and California’s Prop 25. Host Laura Arnold, Co-Founder of Arnold Ventures, is joined by California Gov. Gavin Newsom, above, and Alliance for Safety and Justice President Lenore Anderson.

Some Background: Thousands of people are behind bars in California simply because they can’t afford bail, while others are released because they have access to money. This is a critical problem across the country, but in California, voters actually have a chance to make history Nov. 3 when they’ll decide whether California will become the first state to abolish money bail. While virtually everyone except the bail bond industry agrees the money bail system is predatory and needs reform — the issue enjoys enormous bipartisan support — change has been frustratingly slow, despite the fact that millions of Americans contributed to community bail funds this summer to bail out protestors demonstrating for racial justice.

In This Episode: Arnold, Newsom, and Anderson explore the measure’s proposed changes, what continues to make it controversial among some advocates, and the historic opportunity Californians have to say goodbye to money bail. You can listen to it here or on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, or your favorite podcast app. You can also join the conversation on social media using the hashtag #DeepDive. 

By Rhiannon Meyers Collette, Communications Manager

Let's start with a definition: Price fixing, broadly defined, occurs when competitors conspire to increase — or maintain — prices. Now, in the absence of federal movement on drug pricing, enter regulators and policymakers who've been filing an onslaught of legal challenges in the past year accusing Big Pharma of doing just that.

What’s Happening: You may have missed it amid all the other news that has dominated 2020, but earlier this year, two generic drug makers settled accusations of price fixing — agreeing to pay multimillion dollar fines and to cooperate with the government's ongoing investigation. In June, all 50 states filed a joint lawsuit accusing two dozen of the world's biggest drug manufacturers of conspiring to fix generic drug prices. Then came another set of allegations in August against Teva, a major generic manufacturer, which has been charged by the U.S. Department of Justice for doing the same thing.

Why it Matters: Prescription drugs are expensive, and anticompetitive behavior only serves to keep the prices high and increasing at a time when Americans can least afford them.

What's Next: While the litigation may help spur momentum toward stronger and broader reforms, legal action alone cannot solve the problem — and substantive policy changes are necessary to address the market failures underpinning high drug prices.

By Adrienne Faraci, Communications Manager

Making good on pension promises is a perennial problem for state and local lawmakers. Like people failing to save for retirement, states have sometimes failed to make scheduled annual contributions to pension funds, which rely heavily on earning investment income over time to meet future obligations. 

What’s Happening: Over the past couple of decades interest rates have remained low, meaning there’s less money to be made from certain classes of stable investments. And while the stock market has enjoyed a bullish run for a decade following the Great Recession, returns have been volatile due to the impact of the pandemic on the global economy. Given recent historically low-interest rates and the political infeasibility of raising taxes right now, some policymakers have turned to pension obligation bonds. 

Bottom Line: Pension bonds allow states and localities to borrow large sums of money to immediately fill pension funding holes while banking on a larger rate of returns from the market. It's a risky play, but one that some states are willing to take. We canvassed pension experts on this nuanced funding strategy to better understand the role bonds play in shoring up pension systems.

“The Women Who Run,” an ABC News roundtable discussion on the record number of women of color running for Congress in 2020. There are 115 vying for U.S. House seats, and ABC’s Deborah Roberts spoke with eight of them from both sides of the aisle in a candid discussion on what motivated them to run and the challenges they have faced in their campaigns. But it’s about more than breaking records: Diverse voices in Congress can help bring attention to issues impacting women and communities of color that have long been sidelined.

The latest “America, Interrupted” podcast episode on the challenges voters in key states have faced in casting their ballots, why voter suppression continues, and how the pandemic has made it worse. Host Amna Nawaz is joined by PBS NewsHour politics reporter Daniel Bush, who spoke directly to voters on all sides of the aisle about their fears, distrust, and frustration about the 2020 election.

By Stuart Buck, Vice President of Research

One of the best ways to detect research malpractice is to re-examine the data. That’s why one of the best ways to improve research is to require that data be shared – otherwise, no one can re-examine it in the first place. 
 

With a 2020 budget of $42 billion, the NIH is the biggest research funder in the United States. Its policies affect untold numbers of research projects at every research university. For years, it has toyed with a data sharing requirement, but has never gone quite far enough. 
 

Last year, the NIH released a proposed data sharing requirement, and asked for public comments. Public comments are a great way to influence a regulatory agency, since the agency is by law required to take comments into account. Even better, regulatory agencies often value hearing from neutral and respected parties – such as AV – rather than only hearing from businesses or organizations that have an ax to grind because they are the ones subjected to regulation. Thus, I wrote up comments on behalf of AV, and got a couple of other foundation leaders to sign on (hopefully increasing the impact).
 

The NIH just released its Final Rule on Thursday. The result? Not so bad. The final rule is definitely improved along several dimensions where we (and others) filed comments. Here's how. Continue reading >
 

New Funding Opportunity: As part of efforts to to better understand how to improve the systems that deliver care to a population of more than 12 million people who are dually eligible for Medicare and Medicaid, we are seeking to fund researchers who are guided by the following principles: policy relevance, rigor and independence, and alignment with our strategy. Learn more here.

The Criminal Justice and Evidence-Based Policy teams at Arnold Ventures are teaming up to learn more about what works in criminal justice reform in an ongoing request for proposals for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that will test programs and practices. There is no deadline for submissions.

The Evidence-Based Policy team invites grant applications to conduct randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of social programs in any area of U.S. policy. Details are here.

View all RFPs here