What New Jersey Got Right

In rural New York, Greene County Family Planning struggles to meet the region’s demand for high-quality, low-cost family planning services to underserved patients. The clinic is one of more than 3,000 clinics across the country that receive the majority of its funding through Title X, a federal program devoted to providing family planning services to low-income Americans free of charge or at discounted rates. We talked to clinicians and patients at this rural clinic to learn more.

Why It Matters: While demand for these health care services has increased over time, funding has flatlined for the past eight years.

"Health centers that receive Title X funding are critical in closing the gap in access to care and promoting health equity in a way that meets patients where they are,” said Audrey Sandusky, senior director of policy and communications at the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association (NFPRHA), a member organization that represents publicly funded family planning providers. “They’re a lifeline for people who are seeking a broad range of contraceptive methods.”

What’s Next: Congress is long due to address some of the funding shortfalls impacting these services for people in communities across the country.

Across the U.S., advocates are pushing lawmakers to eliminate harmful court debt. “I feel like I’m never going to catch up,” said Damita Price, an Oklahoma woman who is still paying off court fines many years after completing her sentence. “I live paycheck to paycheck. I can barely buy gas.”

What’s Happening: In Oklahoma, the Oklahoma Policy Institute has supported bipartisan legislation to alleviate fines and fees for indigent defendants and young people in the state, winning some key victories. Policymakers have also made progress in a diverse set of states, with California, Delaware, Louisiana, Massachusetts, and Texas, all passing recent bills to scale back fees.

Why It Matters: For many people, court fines and fees create a devastating financial burden and worsen conditions of poverty. In some cases, the inability to pay off court debt results in arrest, essentially criminalizing poverty. Fines and fees are also an ineffective way for states to raise revenue, research shows.

What’s Next: Other states have recently taken up reform measures with support from End Justice Fees, a national campaign devoted to eliminating all fees in the justice system and discharging court debt. Advocates are hopeful about this growing trend.

$145 Billion

Annual market for monoclonal antibodies, a type of biologic drug

On the frontlines of medicine, the market for biologic drugs is exploding. And within that landscape is an ongoing Supreme Court case involving high-priced prescriptions with underpinnings in the drug patent space. The case itself will determine whether Amgen can block competitors from the market for cholesterol-lowering drugs and for how long. The stakes are high, for both potential precedent-setting implications throughout the drug industry and billions of dollars that are on the line in this ballooning pharmaceutical market. That’s why it has drawn the attention of seasoned physicians and experts, who are well-versed in the monopolistic maneuvering of the drug industry and poised to call out manufacturer overreach. And the pharmaceutical industry is keeping a close watch, too. 

What's Happening: $145 billion is the annual market for monoclonal antibodies, a type of biologic that can have different uses, like fighting cancer and treating certain patients with high cholesterol. Monoclonal antibodies are just one type of biologic that carry a high price tag. For monoclonal antibodies alone, the market is expected to double by 2026.

Why It Matters: But what is a biologic? It’s a drug derived from living cells and often comes in the form of an injectable medicine. Small molecule drugs, on the other hand — the typical pill — can be copied via chemical recipes like batches of cookies to create cheaper generics. Biologics are much tougher to copy, and subsequent versions of a drugmaker’s pricey original also carry extreme price tags.

What's Next: The ongoing Supreme Court case involves the drug maker Amgen and its rivals, which are fighting over market share for cholesterol-lowering monoclonal antibodies.

AV grantees Professor Robin Feldman with the University of California Law, San Francisco and Dr. Aaron Kesselheim, who leads Harvard's Program On Regulation, Therapeutics, And Law (PORTAL), as well as Arnold Ventures and others have weighed in. They assert in amicus briefs that manufacturer overreach and patents that are too broad give drug companies control over more than they invented, hurting competition that would lower prices, patients, and drug innovation. Arguments are scheduled for March 27.

Related: Patent reform is an important tenet of AV’s policy focus to lower drug prices for all Americans.

• In the Houston Chronicle, AV Director of Criminal Justice Asheley Van Ness suggests that rather than gun buyback programs, localities should invest in evidence-based strategies to reduce community violence.
   

• The Los Angeles Times editorial board discusses how some state governments are subverting local democratic processes by removing elected progressive prosecutors. The editorial cites a new report from the Public Rights Project, an AV grantee, and the Local Solutions Support Project.
   
• AV grantee the Deason Criminal Justice Reform Center at Southern Methodist University recently published a policy brief that explores approaches to recruiting prosecutors and public defenders to work in rural Texas to address the current scarcity.
   
• CBS News reports on how the Supreme Court's Bruen decision has led to considerable uncertainty around new and existing gun laws. The article quotes Joseph Blocher, co-director of Duke University's Center for Firearms Law, an AV grantee.
   
• FiveThirtyEight highlights how policies to address gun violence do not have a strong evidence base due to decades of neglect and underfunding. The piece quotes Rosanna Smart and Andrew Morral from the RAND Corporation, an AV grantee.
   
• WUNC, North Carolina public radio, profiles community response teams, one of four programs being piloted in Durham to innovate responses to service calls. The write-up features research and quotes from AV grantees at RTI and the Cohort of Cities project.
   
• In a new report from the Harvard Kennedy School Government Performance Lab, an AV grantee, local officials from across the country share personal experiences, challenges, and opportunities around how to advance police accountability.

• In a comment letter to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) this week, AV encourages the agency’s effort to improve Medicare Advantage (MA), the privately run arm of the Medicare program.
   
• Medicare’s historic plan to slow prescription drug spending is taking shape. Last Thursday federal health officials began detailing how one of two major drug price reforms contained in the Inflation Reduction Act will work and who it will affect. Listen to Tradeoffs podcast and get additional context in the outlet's digital story.
   
• Health Affairs is running several ongoing series on health care affordability; all are accepting submissions. Make sure to check out:
  
  Coverage on the prices charged by hospitals, physicians, and other health care providers in the commercial sector (submission information here)
  
  Coverage on Medicare and Medicaid integration (submission information here)
  
  Coverage on advancing accountable care for population health (submission information here)

• Higher Ed Dive gives a glimpse into the House Committee on Education and the Workforce's first hearing, titled “American Education in Crisis.” The hearing included discussions about the return on investment of a college education, expanding the Pell Grant to cover short-term programs, and the need to provide more access to postsecondary programs.
   
• How much has student loan forgiveness cost so far? Nat Malkus at AV grantee the American Enterprise Institute has a tracker for that. It provides all the loan forgiveness and foregone interest revenues from both the Trump and Biden administrations. Combining forgiveness programs, Borrower Defense, Closed Schools, Total and Permanent Disability discharges, and the cost of the student loan pause, the tracker estimates that $256 billion has already been spent.
   
• In The Hill, Beth Akers of AV grantee the American Enterprise Institute points out how the White House has significantly miscalculated the cost of changes to the student loan program. She underscores the importance of the impact of the regulatory changes to income-driven repayment, which if enacted, would turn a safety net program that was designed to aid those who are struggling economically into a widespread giveaway program — costing taxpayers far more than the Education Department has estimated.
   
• In Higher Ed Dive, the Department of Education announced this week that it will be reviewing guidance that allows online program managers (OPMs) to conduct revenue sharing with institutions of higher education; OPMs bundle multiple services together (including recruitment, course design and more), and that bundling is coming under increased scrutiny.
  
  Related: Online Program Management Companies: A For-Profit Pocket Within Higher Ed
   

• In the The Wall Street Journal, Austen Hufford covers discussion around waste, fraud, and abuse in pandemic-era emergency unemployment insurance programs.
   
• Also in the The Wall Street Journal, Ben Ritz of AV grantee the Progressive Policy Institute writes about why a bipartisan commission to shore up the solvency of Social Security and Medicare should not be seen as “a death panel,” but a necessary step to avoid future benefit cuts.
   
• In The New York Times, Jim Tankersley and Alan Rappeport highlight new forecasts from the Congressional Budget Office, which project that $19 trillion will be added to the national debt over the next decade.
   

• Republican Connecticut State Sens. Heather Somers and Ryan Fazio have proposed legislation to allow pharmacists to prescribe contraception, on NBC-Connecticut.

• The U.S. will not be able to address climate change without bipartisanship, write Ryan Costello and Francis Rooney in this Politico op-ed, arguing that it is past time for the environmental movement to engage right-of-center communities.

• The Trace is spearheading a new project empowering people affected by gun violence in Chicago to shape the narrative around this epidemic. Learn more about their storytelling network for survivors.
   
• One year after it launched, Capital B is expanding its local network to include a new newsroom in Gary, Indiana, where there's "a unique opportunity for Capital B to build a newsroom in a Black city that has too long been underserved by mainstream media."
   
• Following an investigation by The Marshall Project that revealed violent and deadly conditions in an Illinois prison, the federal Bureau of Prisons announced plans to close the Thomson penitentiary.

• An exclusive in The Washington Post details the launch of a new National Courtwatch Network. It includes an award-winning short video by AV-grantee Zealous, with an original score from Fiona Apple. Carmen Johnson, director of Courtwatch PG, and Apple also appeared on Washington Post Live to discuss the effort.

• Medicare’s historic plan to slow prescription drug spending is taking shape. Last Thursday federal health officials began detailing how one of two major drug price reforms contained in the Inflation Reduction Act will work and who it will affect. Listen to Tradeoffs podcast and get additional context in the outlet's digital story.
   

• The Decarceration Nation podcast features AV grantee Sheena Meade, CEO of the Clean Slate Initiative, discussing the bipartisan coalition advancing policies to automatically clear all eligible arrest and conviction records across the United States. You can also watch on YouTube.

• On Thursday, March 2 from 2-4 p.m. EST, the Data Collaborative for Justice will host a webinar titled “Beyond Arrest: Prioritizing Community Safety & Wellness." It will bring together researchers and experts in a two-part discussion covering the most recent research on alternatives to arrest and their practical implementation. For more information and to register, head over to the event page.

• This item is not for those with delicate ears, but for people like me, who worked in a newsroom at night and still has trouble not swearing in front of her children: "An Ode to Swearing," via The Atlantic.
   
• I know a lot of you have been in the crowd at Bruce Springsteen's latest tour (including my colleagues on the journalism portfolio Rhiannon Collette and Jeff Cohen). So enjoy this story about E Street Band member Steven Van Zandt gifting one of his signature bandanas to Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.), who is undergoing chemotherapy.
   
• A 15-year-old scientist is taking on Flint’s water crisis.