Marian Miner Cook
Athenaeum

A distinctive
feature of social and
cultural life at CMC

 

Innovation Dilemma: Access and Innovation in an Age of Curative Therapies

Fri, March 23, 2018
Lunch Program
Amitabh Chandra

Science discoveries along with generous incentives for producing new medical innovations have created a raft of high-priced therapies. Their presence strains the ability of payers to provide access, especially when there has been little income growth for a large share of the population, and when tax-revenues are projected to fall substantially in coming decades. These pressures will be exacerbated as the world sees the first-wave of curative therapies for monogenic diseases like cystic fibrosis and Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Amitabh Chandra, professor of social policy and director of health policy research at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, will discuss these tradeoffs and offer polices to address them.­­­

Amitabh Chandra is the Malcolm Wiener Professor of Social Policy and Director of Health Policy Research at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. He teaches undergraduates in Harvard College, graduate students at the Kennedy School and Harvard Business School, and in Harvard's executive education programs.

Chandra is a member of the Congressional Budget Office's (CBO) Panel of Health Advisors, and is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). His research focuses on innovation and cost-growth in healthcare, medical malpractice, and racial disparities in healthcare. His research has been supported by the National Institute of Aging, the National Institute of Child Health and Development, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and has been published in the American Economic Review, the Journal of Political Economy, the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association, and Health Affairs. He is the chair editor of the Review of Economics and Statistics.

Chandra has testified to the United States Senate and the United States Commission on Civil Rights. His research has been featured in the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, Newsweek, and on National Public Radio. He has been a consultant to the RAND Corporation, Microsoft Research, the Institute of Medicine and the Blue Cross Blue Shield Foundation of Massachusetts. In 2011, he served as Massachusetts' Special Commissioner on provider price reform.

Chandra is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, the first-prize recipient of the Upjohn Institute's Dissertation Award, the Kenneth Arrow Award for best paper in health economics, and the Eugene Garfield Award for the impact of medical research. In 2012, he was awarded American Society of Health Economists (ASHE) medal. The ASHE Medal is awarded biennially to the economist age 40 or under who has made the most significant contributions to the field of health economics.

Professor Chandra’s Athenaeum presentation is the keynote for the 2018 Southern California Conference in Applied Microeconomics (SoCCAM), hosted by the Lowe Institute of Political Economy at CMC.

 

Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum

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