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Few people dispute that it costs a billion dollars or so to bring a new drug to market. That's a heavy cost foreign manufacturers don't have to pay. The fact t
by forrestthewoods 11y ago
Few people dispute that it costs a billion dollars or so to bring a new drug to market. That's a heavy cost foreign manufacturers don't have to pay.
The fact that marketing is a higher spend is irrelevant. It's like free2play on mobile. You spend a bunch of money developing something. If you can spend $.90 in user acquisition to earn back $1.00 then you throw every single dollar you can muster so long as the benefit is higher than the cost. It's a diminishing returns equation so you do as long as you can. The highest grossing games have marketing campaigns on the order of $100,000,000. Basically the same thing here. Take out as many loans as you can so long as it works.
- pavedwalden 11y agoI'm not saying you're wrong, but it struck me as funny to see a much-criticised practice in the pharmaceutical industry being defended by comparing it to F2P mobile games, which are also widely reviled.
- forrestthewoods 11y agoHah. I'm no fan of the f2p mobile gaming industry myself. But the math is very straight forward there. It exists for non-f2p games as well but it's less obvious and clear.
- duaneb 11y agoI don't think they're questioning the business efficacy, I think they're questioning the need for protections for the industry.
- tsotha 11y agoI don't see how Pharmaceutical companies can exist without IP protections, unless you're willing to publicly fund the entire development cycle. For the vast majority of drugs the cost of producing the tablet you take is just a few cents, which is dwarfed by the amortized cost of the R&D. Nobody is going to spend on R&D if competitors can skip that part and go right to production.