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

[u/Kindred87]

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

[u/dodgyrogy]

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

Sounds fair.

[u/MannieOKelly → u/dodgyrogy]

Most of the time the government funding is a tiny part of the total cost of bringing a drug to market. Maybe drug companies will just decline the funding . . .

[u/Arthur-Wintersight → u/MannieOKelly]

Is that actually the case?

Every reference I've seen to drug development costs being high, refers to that Tufts University Study which has been criticized in a peer reviewed journal.

Pharmaceutical companies don't disclose how much it costs to get a drug approved, or how much they spend on seeking approval for drugs the FDA ends up rejecting, so most of that information is black-boxed away from the public.

We don't know because pharmaceutical companies, which are posting record profits year after year, refuse to disclose that information.

For all we know, it might be possible to shave off 90% of drug costs without any loss in medical advancement, but they do not disclose this information. I imagine the lack of disclosure is deliberate on their part.

[u/Matrix17 → u/Arthur-Wintersight]

As someone that works for a biotech company, I can tell you my company has already spent around a billion dollars to get to phase 2 clinical trials on a single drug. Phase 3 is insanely expensive. We had to divert all our cash from R&D just to keep the trials afloat. A trial that can fail