Drugs, Taxes, and Justice: What Stood Out in the SOTU

By Evan Mintz, director of communications

President Biden delivered his third State of the Union address on Tuesday, highlighting the legislative accomplishments of his first two years and calling on a new Republican majority in the House to work with him on bipartisan issues. Naturally, many of these policy calls-to-action touch on our work at Arnold Ventures.

• Health Care: Surprise medical billing and Medicare drug price negotiations were raised as key policy wins.
   
• Public Finance: Biden called for a crackdown on tax fraud in the wake of Congress granting $80 billion in new funding to support the modernization of administrative and audit procedures at the Internal Revenue Service. However, more work needs to be done to ensure the new funding is used effectively.
   
• Criminal Justice: After the killing of Tyre Nichols by Memphis police officers, Biden used his national address to elevate police accountability at the highest levels, echoing the hope of Nichols' mother that "something good will come of this.”
  
  These remarks on police accountability were one of the few moments met with a standing ovation on both sides of the aisle, but it is the time to move from applause to action.
  
  Biden also raised the issue of crisis response — particularly in the context of the dual crises of mental health and the opioid overdose epidemic — and the need for firearm safety.
  
  Read the Arnold Ventures policing team's full take on these critical issues.
  
  Read the full story on our State of the Union takeaways.

By Michael Friedrich, ArnoldVentures.org contributor

There are racial inequities in the way courts assign fees to youth and the impacts those fees have, according to a first-of-its-kind study from the University of Miami. Florida courts are more likely to assign fees to Black and Hispanic youth in disadvantaged areas and levy higher fees when they do. The study also finds that youth with court debt are more likely to have future justice system involvement.

Why it Matters: Advocates have long asserted that monetary sanctions disproportionately harm low-income youth of color and their families, essentially functioning as a regressive tax on those who have the least ability to pay and trapping them in a system that drives vast social ills. At the same time, such monetary sanctions are ineffective, for both the state and taxpayers, providing little in the way of revenue. 

What’s Next: Advocacy groups are newly energized by the study’s findings. The Fines and Fees Justice Center and the Juvenile Law Center are supporting legislation that will eliminate some juvenile fees in Florida and other states across the U.S.

By Torie Ludwin, communications manager

This week, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit reversed and remanded a lower court ruling that barred students from suing owners and executives of the Illinois Institute of Art for hiding the school’s loss of accreditation — a major win for consumer and borrower rights in higher education.

Why it Matters: When a school is not accredited, the degrees it offers are of no value to students or employers. “The Sixth Circuit’s ruling restores the rights of students who were defrauded by Dream Center schools,” said Student Defense Litigation Director Eric Rothschild, an AV grantee. “These school executives tried to skirt responsibility for the harm they inflicted on students who paid thousands of dollars for worthless degrees based on lies. This ruling affirms our clients’ rights to recover for their losses and is a major win for accountability in higher education.”

What's Next: The former students may now move forward with their class action lawsuit against the Dream Center Foundation and school executives Brent Richardson, Chris Richardson, and Shelley Murphy. The lawsuit is currently pending in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, having survived numerous motions to dismiss.

Related: Read the story of RJ Infusino, a student at the Dream Center's Illinois Institute of Art, who became the lead plaintiff in the 2018 class action suit against his school.

By Evan Mintz, director of communications

In the run-up to the State of the Union, Arnold Ventures President and CEO Kelli Rhee sat down for a fireside chat with Punchbowl News Founder and CEO Anna Palmer to celebrate the beginning of the 118th Congress.

Why it Matters: A divided Congress means that bipartisan and nonpartisan organizations like Arnold Ventures need to play a critical role in bridging divides between the parties to make sure that Washington is able to take on our nation's greatest challenges.

What's Next: Sometimes even the most popular policies struggle to overcome partisan divides. As Rhee said at the event, lowering drug prices "literally polls better than Christmas." Nevertheless, it took nearly two decades for Congress to approve Medicare drug price negotiations. Arnold Ventures will continue to work with grantees and a bipartisan coalition to create lasting change that can maximize opportunity and minimize injustice.

By Thomas Hanna, communications manager

With support from AV, four new grants are being made available to early-career members of the Racial Democracy Crime and Justice Network (RDCJN) who want to focus their research on community supervision.

What's Happening: Grant applications are open through Feb. 15, and the program will be supervised by Rod Brunson, University of Maryland Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice professor and interim chair, and Lauren Krivo, professor emerita in Rutgers University’s Department of Sociology. “I am thrilled that Arnold Ventures invested in this program that will advance racial equity in community supervision and promote innovative research by scholars from underrepresented groups in our network,” said Krivo.

Why it Matters: Many young scholars struggle to access research funding. This is especially true for those from underrepresented groups, those who are at universities that lack strong research infrastructure, and those who are studying topics that have traditionally been underfunded.

“This new program aligns with our interest in advancing racial equity and community safety and supporting evidence-informed community supervision reform and policy change,” said Jocelyn Fontaine, vice president of criminal justice research at AV. “I am so excited about this program’s potential to advance equity in justice reform by supporting and elevating the work of emerging scholars in the Network. The scholars have diverse lived experiences and expertise, and a deep understanding of social programs, all of which are critical to informing policy solutions to community supervision.”

Learn more >

Criminal Justice

• In a new op-ed, former New Jersey Attorney General Chris Porrino writes that the state's bipartisan Criminal Justice Reform Act of 2017 has been successful and urges policymakers not roll-back the historic bail reform legislation.
   
• The Missoulian does a deep dive on the ongoing crisis in the public defense system and covers a forthcoming report that will make the case for reform.
   
• Walter Katz, AV vice president of criminal justice, was quoted in an Atlantic article that discusses why there were not more meaningful reforms to policing made between the racial justice protests of 2020 and the recent killing of Tyre Nichols in Memphis.
   

• Houston Landing, a new nonprofit news outlet, published its first major story: an exposé about Texans with mental health problems dying in the local jail.

Health Care

• Looking backward, a new paper published in JAMA estimates just how much money could have been saved if the Medicare price negotiations included in the Inflation Reduction Act had taken effect from 2018 to 2020.
   
• Looking forward, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services released new details about how drug price reforms contained in the Inflation Reduction Act will be enacted, Tradeoffs reports.
   
• A recent blog post in Health Affairs Forefront offers some of the best thinking on drug supply chain resilience and even provides policy recommendations for lawmakers.
   
• Call for Submissions: Health Affairs launched an AV-supported series on advancing accountable care for population health. It will feature analysis, proposals, and commentary to inform state and federal policies that advance payment models and hold providers accountable for the cost and quality of care. The series will accept submissions on a rolling basis and publish throughout 2023. Check out the call for submissions here.
  
  Related: Health Affairs is seeking submissions for a series on the prices charged by hospitals, physicians, and other health care providers in the commercial sector.
  
  Related: Arnold Ventures Commercial Sector Prices Fact Sheet
  
  Related: AV Policy Focus: Provider Payment Incentives

Public Finance

• AV grantee the Tax Policy Center released a report on how typical variations of families’ finances and structures from year to year impacts how much they receive in the Child Tax Credit.
   
• In The Wall Street Journal, Richard Rubin writes that other OECD countries are moving forward with the 15% global minimum tax for corporations while the Biden administration’s efforts to push the plan through Congress have stalled. (free link)
   
• Jin Zhang and Matt Darling at the Niskanen Center discuss a path to a “more legible” unemployment insurance policy.
   
• The Economist breaks down why pandemic relief programs were so susceptible to improper payments and fraud. 
   
• Felix Salmon of Axios looks at new research from AV grantee Stanford RegLab on differential audit rates at the IRS.
   
• Ben Ritz of AV grantee the Progressive Policy Institute discusses options for getting the country’s finances back on course to fiscal sustainability.

Contraceptive Choice and Access

• In the Associated Press, Indiana lawmakers consider several ways to increase contraceptive access in the state, including pharmacist-prescribed birth control, allowing Medicaid recipients same-day access to long-acting reversible contraceptives, and permitting women the option of having a long-acting reversible contraceptive device implanted after giving birth.
   
• The Center for American Progress issued a report on advancing contraceptive access via pharmacist prescriptions; this is the second installment on its series highlighting ways to increase contraceptive access on the state level.
  
  Related: Oasis in the Contraception Desert: Pharmacist Prescriptions Increase Access to Birth Control

Higher Education

• The Penn Wharton Budget Model estimates the Biden administration’s new income-driven repayment (IDR) plan will cost roughly between $333 billion and $361 billion over the next 10 years, more than twice as much as what the Biden administration estimated.
   
• The Century Foundation’s Carolyn Fast lays out six policy changes to improve consumer protections for online students by changing NC-SARA, the reciprocity agreement that allows distance education to be authorized in member states.
   
• AV grantee the Aspen Institute announced the 10 community colleges selected to participate in its Unlocking Opportunity: The Post-Graduation Success and Equity Network. The schools are committed to improving students’ post-completion outcomes by strengthening the programs they offer and the advising they provide.

• "The Picture Taker" from Independent Lens documents the life of photographer Ernest Withers, who chronicled the Black experience in Memphis and the South during the height of the Civil Rights movement. Withers recorded major moments in history through his camera lens, including the trial of Emmett Till's killers and the Montgomery bus boycotts. He gained intimate access to subjects like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Elvis Presley, and Aretha Franklin. A former police officer, Withers also served as an FBI informant. (The film offers contrasting takes in this revelation, leaving viewers to decide how they feel about it.) The documentary takes on a heightened sense of urgency after the killing of Tyre Nichols by Memphis police officers, Phil Bertelsen, the film’s director, tells Memphis Commercial Appeal: “Again we learn that the past is prologue, and the more we ignore the past the more we’re destined to repeat it.”

• Also: The Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO), an AV grantee, has teamed up with LinkedIn to create a first-of-its-kind learning module: Job Seeking with a Criminal Record. The course, developed and taught by Dr. Genevieve Rimer, a national expert and CEO's director of inclusive hiring, guides job seekers with hands-on exercises, downloadable worksheets, and real-life examples of her own journey from incarceration to success. Access the modules here.

• The latest season of the "Motive" podcast by WBEZ Chicago, hosted by Patrick Smith, tells the very real stories of violence in Chicago and the people — former gang members — working to stop it through Community Violence Intervention work.
   
• "Is the Party Over for the Best-Selling Drug Humria?" The Wall Street Journal's Jared Hopkins and Kate Linebaugh dig into what competition for Humira — long the poster child for patent abuse — could mean for patients and the drug industry.

• On Tuesday, Feb. 21 from 9 a.m.-1 p.m. PST (12 p.m. to 4 p.m., EST) RAND Education and Labor and RAND Social and Economic Well-Being will host a virtual event on "The Research Case for Hiring People with Criminal History Records: California in Focus." Supported by AV and The Michelson 20MM Foundation, the event will feature Director Kevin Kish of the California Department of Human Rights and Dr. Shawn Bushway, RAND Senior Policy Researcher. Register here.
   
• On Tuesday, Feb. 28 from 2-3 p.m. EST, the Urban Institute will host "A Conversation on Restrictive Housing" with featured speakers Sara Sullivan, senior policy advisor at the US Department of Justice, and Keramet Reiter, professor and vice chair of criminology, law, and society at the University of California, Irvine. This will be the first event in the Urban Institute's new bi-monthly “Prison Research Meets Practice” series, which is supported by AV. Register here.

• Enjoy the Super Bowl ads leaked so far.
   
• Do you agree with New York magazine's list of rules for existing in polite society?
   
• Check out this data visualization of all-time leading scorer LeBron James' career points. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar even wrote about the King breaking his record.
   
• Here's a heartwarming story of how 115 dogs were rescued when their day care went up in flames.