A real health cost crisis to think about – Médecins Sans Frontières on immunisation

• Rocketing vaccine cost warning – “The price of life-saving vaccines has skyrocketed leaving some countries struggling to fully immunise children, Medecins Sans Frontieres warns. A report by the charitysays there has been a 68-fold increase in prices between 2001 and 2014. It accused the pharmaceutical industry of overcharging and highlighted cases where rich western countries were getting a better rate than poor ones. Industry said its pricing reflected the cost of manufacture.”

• Hating Good Government – “… most self-proclaimed conservatives are actually reactionaries. That is, they’re defenders of traditional hierarchy — the kind of hierarchy that is threatened by any expansion of government, even (or perhaps especially) when that expansion makes the lives of ordinary citizens better and more secure.”

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• OECD employment rate increases to 65.7% in third quarter of 2014 – “The OECD area employment rate – defined as the share of people of working-age who are in employment – increased by 0.1 percentage point to 65.7% in the third quarter of 2014. The OECD employment rate is 0.5 percentage point higher than one year before, but still 0.8 percentage point below its level in the second quarter of 2008.”
• Monty Python scenario that shows Britain is a constitutional mess
• Airlines could slash ticket prices as fuel costs plummet. Here’s why they won’t
• What the Swiss FX shock says about risk models – “The Swiss central bank last week abandoned its euro exchange rate ceiling. This column argues that the fallout from the decision demonstrates the inherent weaknesses of the regulator-approved standard risk models used in financial institutions. These models under-forecast risk before the announcement and over-forecast risk after the announcement, getting it wrong in all states of the world.”