Jishian Ravinthiran

Special thanks to @maybarduk.bsky.social for making this amazing fellowship happen!

The NIH is the globe’s largest funder of biomedical research. Leveraging its unique role, NIH could attach access obligations to publicly funded health technologies and dramatically expand access for millions across the globe.

Integrating Equity Into Licensing Agreements For Taxpayer-Funded Technologies | Health Affairs Forefront Current National Institutes of Health (NIH) policy allows corporations to commercialize medical technologies with few safeguards for global access. A new draft NIH policy begins to address that, but t...

New from @publiccitizen.bsky.social, @dndi.org, MSF-USA, KEI (@jamielove.bsky.social), Health GAP, and @mbarber.bsky.social

We urge NIH to ensure global access to publicly funded medicines by strengthening and implementing its draft policy on access planning when licensing NIH inventions

Many Senate Judiciary Dems, who have voiced their concerns about drug prices, voted for PREVAIL. It is frustrating. The bill is clearly a Pharma handout that will give more power to branded drug companies to build patent thickets. Is this what the Dems stand for?

www.citizen.org/article/usin...

This is why Pharma spends hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying the U.S Govt to erode the integrity of the patent system and prohibit Medicare from negotiating.

Report by @publiccitizen.bsky.social, @roosterjish.bsky.social: www.citizen.org/article/usin...

Medicare’s lost savings for Enbrel, Stelara, Xarelto, and Januvia due to patent abuse: $4,912,545,821.61 to $5,390,261,854.07

Report by @publiccitizen.bsky.social, @roosterjish.bsky.social: www.citizen.org/article/usin...

NEW: @publiccitizen.bsky.social reveals the billions of 💰 drug companies have extracted from Medicare by abusing the patent system to hike drug prices.

Medicare must heavily weigh the costs of patent abuse when negotiating maximum fair prices.

Thanks to @tahiramin.bsky.social and Alex Moss for their critical insights for this Report, and @brycerobinson.bsky.social for research and writing assistance.

These patent abuses enable drug makers to unfairly extend their monopolies on vital medications and keep prices artificially high. In future years of negotiation, CMS should account for how these patent abuses already rip off taxpayers and enrollees to reach fair price during negotiation

Using the Inflation Reduction Act to Rein in Patenting & Evergreening Abuses - Public Citizen

New report: We find pervasive patent abuses on the drugs selected for Medicare price negotiation, which deprive enrollees of access to affordable alternatives. Medicare will lose $5 billion due to these abuses, almost as much as it will save in the first year of negotiation.

Twice-Yearly Lenacapavir for HIV Prevention in Men and Gender-Diverse Persons | NEJM Twice-yearly subcutaneous lenacapavir has been shown to be efficacious for prevention of HIV infection in cisgender women. The efficacy of lenacapavir for preexposure prophylaxis (PrEP) in cisgende...

PURPOSE-2 results are now published. It demonstrates high level effectiveness of twice a year Lenacapavir for HIV prevention in Men and gender diverse persons.
An important milestone for long acting injectables for PrEP. Now we need to address the issue of access.
www.nejm.org/doi/full/10....

How Agencies Should Decide Which Costly Drugs To Target With Government March-In Rights | Health Affairs Forefront March-in rights are vital safeguards that allow the federal government to license competitors when the owner is not making a taxpayer-funded invention reasonably available or cannot meet public health...

As stakeholders await final federal guidance on the use of government march-in rights, @roosterjish.bsky.social, @akesselheim.bsky.social, & Steve Knievel (@publiccitizen.bsky.social) outline a set of 7 key factors agencies should consider when deciding to use march-in rights to lower drug prices.

A new Commonwealth Fund survey finds that a higher share of Medicare Advantage (MA) beneficiaries have problems affording healthcare vs. those with Traditional Medicare, particularly those with lower incomes.

Very much undercuts the narrative that MA provides better financial protection!

We identify the factors agencies can use to license generic competitors when a drug corporation engages in pricing abuses of a taxpayer funded drug. Using march-in rights could increase affordable access to lifesaving cancer and heart disease treatments for thousands of patients across the country

🚨 Senate Judiciary is set to mark up the PREVAIL Act on Thursday, Nov 21.

The bill would, among other issues, make it harder for generic manufacturers to invalidate patent thickets that keep brand drug prices high #a2m #drugpricing