Vital Health Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Dan Leonard, Executive Director, We Work For Health Oct 11, 2023

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Dan is the newly appointed Executive Director of We Work For Health, bringing more than two decades of experience in advocacy, policy, and public affairs to this role. He previously headed the Association for Accessible Medicines (AAM) and the National Pharmaceutical Council (NPC).
In this podcast, we discuss the ten drugs selected for negotiation under the IRA and their unintended consequences on the availability and access of generic and biosimilar medicines. We also highlight the desire for many regulators to broaden government negotiations within Medicare under the Smart Pricing Act and the recently introduced bill by Congressman Frank Pallone, Jr. (NJ-06).

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Cancer Drug Developer Dr. Steve Potts' Congressional Testimony on the IRA Sep 27, 2023

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In this Vital Health Podcast, we’re speaking with Steve Potts before his congressional testimony for the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce. Steve presented evidence regarding the negative impacts of the Inflation Reduction Act on U.S. venture capital investors, the development of small molecules, and the needed therapies that will most likely be lost to patients over the next ten years.

Steve is a hugely successful serial entrepreneur in the life sciences, leading several companies to develop new cancer treatments. He is a board member of AZBio and an expert on the development of small molecules for the treatment of cancer.

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Amy Miller and the PhRMA Foundation Push the R&D Envelope Sep 20, 2023

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In this vital health podcast, we’re speaking with Amy M. Miller, the recently appointed President of the PhRMA Foundation. Amy has held nonprofit leadership roles for nearly 20 years in DC, including President and CEO of the Society for Women’s Health Research and Executive Vice President of the Personalized Medicine Coalition.

The PhRMA Foundation catalyzes the careers of promising researchers through competitive peer-reviewed grants and fellowships in the drug delivery, drug discovery, translational medicine, health outcomes research, and value assessment fields. Since its founding in 1965, the Foundation has awarded over $110 million to over 2,700 researchers from diverse backgrounds at more than 300 institutions.

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VT’s Grumpy Old Men on Price Controls and IP Attacks Sep 13, 2023

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The U.S. Congress and Biden Administration’s attacks on IP and Drug Pricing continue unabated as the 2024 election approaches. In this Vital Health Podcast, VT’s Grumpy Old Men (Duane Schulthess, Joe Hammang, and Harry P. Bowen) are particularly grumpy about the current state of affairs and dig into their research findings on the Inflation Reduction Act. They also ruminate on what the continued ratcheting-up of rhetoric and legislation against the industry means for tough-to-treat neurological disorders, late-stage cancers, and orphan diseases.

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Taking the Helm Mid Drug Pricing Maelstrom Sep 06, 2023

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In this Vital Health Podcast, Duane Schulthess speaks with Rachel King, the Interim CEO of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO), who is steering the organization through the increasingly choppy waters of the DC drug pricing debate. With mounting regulatory pressure from all angles towards the global biopharma sector, Washington DC’s BIO sits at the center of the tempest.

Rachel King comes to BIO with a wealth of experience as the former Chair of BIO’s Board of Directors. She has worked as a VC, and was both the co-founder and CEO of GlycoMimetics. She was also a senior VP at Novartis.

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Best-of Edition: Looking back on the COVID-19 outbreak part 2 Aug 24, 2023

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In this Best-Of edition of the Vital Health Podcast, we’re looking back on the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and discussions we had with statistician Miriam Sturkenboom and Ivor Cummings, both of whom, in very different ways, were at the center of COVID-19 as to the appropriate response to the pandemic.

Miriam Sturkenboom, who’s vaccine safety monitoring platform VAC4EU, found herself at the center of a tsunami of vaccine rollouts and safety studies in Europe, providing evidence to the European Medicines Agency and other public health bodies. This podcast was first broadcast in October of 2021.

Now an internet and social media legend, it’s likely you’ve stumbled onto Ivor Cummins dissecting the impact of the response to the pandemic with detailed graphs and analysis on YouTube or X (f/k/a Twitter). Before the COVID-19 era, Ivor was a biochemical engineer and had a large following as a presenter on cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and obesity on his popular website, ‘The Fat Emperor.’ The interview with Ivor was first broadcast in February of 2021.

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Best-of Edition: Looking back on the COVID-19 outbreak Aug 10, 2023

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In this Best-Of edition of the Vital Health Podcast, we're looking back on the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, and conversations with Epidemiologist Martin Kulldorff, and Political Scientist Wilfred Reilly. By spring of 2020, there were already serious questions being asked about COVID-19 policies, and both men were expressing skepticism of the political approaches being advocated by governments.

Martin Kulldorff is a world renown biostatistician at the Harvard Medical School and a co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration. Martin was one of the co-defendants in the recent Federal 1st Amendment case, State of Missouri v. Joseph R. Biden, Jr., et al, which found that he and his colleagues' rights were violated when his opinions regarding COVID-19 were censored on social media by the Biden Administration. This interview was first broadcast on June 19th, 2020.

Political scientist Wilfred Reilly is a well-known contrarian on twitter, aka X. He is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Kentucky State University and was an outspoken critic of lockdowns on the basis of his research which found no evidence of their effectiveness. He is the author of several best-selling books on race, politics, and culture in America. This interview was first broadcast on May 22, 2020.

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CMS' Restrictions on Alzheimer's Drugs Aug 01, 2023

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In this Vital Health Podcast, Duane Schulthess speaks with John Dwyer. John is a serial entrepreneur, having successfully built and sold two healthcare start-ups to 3M and Aetna. He’s now a key player in The Global CEO Initiative on Alzheimer’s Disease, and also serves an active role in the patient advocacy organization U.S. Against Alzheimer’s.

John outlines the continued controversy surrounding the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services' intransigence regarding its coverage decision on the next generation treatments for Alzheimer's disease, despite the recent FDA approval for the drug Leqembi, which includes clinical data showing a significant positive impact on patient outcomes. We also outline how the Inflation Reduction Act is changing the investment decisions for new orphan medicines, and the potential fate of recent Senate proposals such as the Smart Pricing Act.

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Biocom California Grapples with Regulatory Assaults on all Fronts Jul 20, 2023

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With the Inflation Reduction Act now law, there are mounting concerns that its drug pricing revisions will have a huge negative impact on the California Biotech ecosystem, arguably, the globe’s leading hub for innovative biotech. Joseph Panetta is President & CEO of Biocom, the San Diego, California organization leading 1200 companies, service sector firms, universities and research institutes working in the biotechnology sector. Joe’s been the head of Biocom since 1999 and is universally regarded as one of the world’s biotech thought leaders.

In this Vital Health Podcast, Joe Panetta and Duane Schulthess discuss the IRA, the Smart Pricing Act, PBM reform, march-in rights, WTO’s waiver of COVID-19 MRA intellectual property, and the seemingly never-ending federal challenges being foisted upon the innovative biopharma sector in California. In this wide-ranging discussion, Joe and Duane even manage to find time to discuss San Diego’s weather.

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Amitabh Chandra - IRA’s potential impact on the US biopharma ecosystem Jul 12, 2023

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Amitabh Chandra is the director of health policy research at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School. Dr Chandra is a rare voice sounding an alarm about the unintended consequences of the drug pricing provisions of the inflation reduction act.

In this Vital Health Podcast, Amitabh highlights the enormous disincentives for small molecules created by the IRA, as companies will receive four fewer years of revenue when compared to large molecules. As well, we touch on the challenges of PBM rebates due to their lack of transparency, and how this is creating political issues for the biopharma sector.

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