We Saw It Coming—What Did We Get Right, and What Did We Miss?

How Did We Get Here?

W hen we talk among ourselves about our business, we use lots of abbreviations and acronyms. We take a lot of things for granted. To understand what I’m talking about all you need to do is try to explain how you get paid to somebody. AWP, WAC, discount, PBM, RA, EOB, DIR, copay, insured amount, rebate, clawback, etc. This is the barrier we face when talking to legislators. We are in a complicat...

How did we get here?

I t is rare that science owes a debt to law. To lawmakers, surely, such as those who regularly make generous appropriations to the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. But law, in the sense of the process and products of litigation? It’s hard to imagine. But this special supplement is deeply in debt to law in just that sense. The funding that supports the research ...

Risk-taking by banks: What did we know and when did we know it?

The systematic risk of US commercial bank stocks more than doubled from 2000 to 2006, primarily due to their increased residential mortgage exposure. Higher levels of mortgage lending produced better earnings but relatively lower stock returns. Banks engaged heavily in mortgage lending encountered less enthusiastic market response to their earnings announcements, suggesting that financial marke...

9 / 11 : What Did We Know and When Did We Know It ?

In February 1998, Osama Bin Laden published a signed statement calling for a fatwa against the United States for its having “declared war against God.” As we now know, the fatwa resulted in the unprecedented attack of 9/11. The issue of whether or not 9/11 was in any way predictable culminated in the public debate between Richard Clarke, former CIA Director George Tenet and the White House. We ...

How did we get here and where are we going?