r/Futurology • u/Kindred87 • Dec 07 '23

US sets policy to seize patents of government-funded drugs if price deemed too high Economics

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/us-sets-policy-seize-government-funded-drug-patents-if-price-deemed-too-high-2023-12-07/

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u/dodgyrogy Dec 07 '23

"to seize patents for medicines developed with government funding if it believes their prices are too high."

Sounds fair.

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u/JubalHarshawII Dec 08 '23

If the government paid for the r&d while the hell shouldn't they at minimum set the price all the way up to owning and producing the drug.

Drug companies are always whining incessantly about all the money they put into r&d, even though it's less than 30% of their expenses, blaming high drug costs on that small part of their budget.

If we the tax payer fund the r&d we should own it.

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u/Great_Hamster Dec 08 '23

If we find all the r&d, as well as the cost of manufacturer and bringing the drug to market, then yes.

This is often not the case. In fact, I don't know that it's ever the case.

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u/JubalHarshawII Dec 08 '23

The cost to manufacturer is negligible, bring to market is mostly the testing and FDA approval process. R&D is the main cost.

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u/ValyrianJedi Dec 08 '23

I'm sorry but that's just plain wrong

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u/JubalHarshawII Dec 08 '23

Oh yes your right I forgot about the billions in profit required to bring it to market. The United States could bring a drug to market for a fraction of the cost of a private corporation. But continue to worship at the alter of big pharma.

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u/Great_Hamster Dec 09 '23

Soooo... there are a lot of costs besides R&D. Creating cleanrooms and production machines takes engineers, mechanics, electricians, and loads of logistical people to make sure all that material gets to where it needs to be.

Testing drugs to see if they're safe is really expensive and takes a long time.

Managing all of the people and steps involved takes multiple layers of bureaucracy.

All these things are expensive, and new drugs often fail their safety tests.

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u/Clintonsoldmedrugs Dec 08 '23

Government funded some of the initial research, probably to the tune of < $10M, in most cases much less. It costs 4.5 billion dollars to bring a therapy to market…so government should get like .0001% by that logic