12 ms·
Drug creation needs to be nationalized, 100% tax funded all the way from researcher to trials to manufacture, and the drugs sold at cost thereafter. And the ph
by JulianMorrison 11y ago
Drug creation needs to be nationalized, 100% tax funded all the way from researcher to trials to manufacture, and the drugs sold at cost thereafter.
And the pharmaceuticals industry needs to just go away.
- cosarara97 11y agoMaybe you could pull that off in some country, but not the USA.
- ZenoArrow 11y agoWhy wouldn't it work in the USA?
- gnoway 11y agoDo you really want Congress arguing over which drug research to fund?
- ZenoArrow 11y agoWhy would Congress be micromanaging it? They don't do that for NASA.
- cdash 11y agoThis was probably a bad comparison to make because they actually do try to micromanage NASA but I do agree with you that for the most part they would not be very involved. The SLS program is jokingly called the Senate Launch System: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System
- gnoway 11y agoAny nationalized program would have to be funded, meaning there would be yearly appropriations bills. Maybe I'm just cynical, but I think this could become a circus every year. As for the NASA comparison... I don't really want drug research to be chronically underfunded.
- brixon 11y agoThe drugs might end up being cheaper, but there will be much less research for drugs (aka less drugs in the future). Greed is a good motivator.
- afandian 11y agoI'm not much familiar with the system in the US, but I got the impression that the state already subsidises a large amount of the research anyway?
- refurb 11y agoBig pharma/biotech spends about 2x what the NIH spends on research. And that doesn't include the tens of billions in biotech VC funding.
- dhimes 11y agoThen what does it include?
- dlss 11y agoReinvested profits?
- dhimes 11y agoThe biotechs with which I am familiar are the early-stage research arm of the development chain. Kind of like acqui-hire startups for google. They live off of investments from vc and/or license deals for final product. My impression was vc was the bulk. But my view might be myoptic, so I was double-checking.
- refurb 11y agoYou are correct. Biotech start-ups live off of VC funding and maybe some NIH funding if they are lucky. Most of them never bring a product to market, instead they are acquired by a big pharma/biotech who has the capital to bring the molecule through FDA approval. The last number I saw was $6B invested in 2014.[1] [1]https://www.pwc.com/us/en/technology/assets/pwc-life-sciences-money-tee-q4-2014.pdf https://www.pwc.com/us/en/technology/assets/pwc-life-science...
- antr 11y agoI want my goverment helping people avoid health issues, rather than subsidising costs that could have been prevented. I've yet to see any one industry that has been nationalised and is performing better (in every sense) than the private sector.
- DanBC 11y agoIn the US the government bits of health care out-perform the private bits of health care. One of the reasons the US has good health outcomes for some things like cancer is because of the huge amounts of government spending.
- antr 11y agoI hope this clarifies my comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10251846 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10251846
- pessimizer 11y agoVirtually all national health care systems perform better (in every sense) than the American private sector one.
- antr 11y agoI agree, a healthcare system, the question is at what cost per patient/treatment. The healthcare system, is a system, not an industry per se. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for public healthcare... but the comment feels like a knee jerk reaction.
- pessimizer 11y agoThe US government currently spends more per capita on healthcare costs than Britain, France, or Canada.
- fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
- ams6110 11y agoNo, this will just make a bad problem worse. Overreaction in the extreme. There may be a need to look at enforcing some more openness to formulas and manufacturing process so that after patents expire it's less possible to maintain an exclusive on a generic. That is consistent with the intent of patent protection and encourages open markets and competition.
- Brakenshire 11y agoThe Pharma industry does need to be relatively strictly regulated - for instance see the issues over withholding and bias in clinical research: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AllTrials https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AllTrials But, nationalizing the industry is impossible. We don't spend anywhere near enough on medical research for it to be possible. The UK government for instance spends about £500m a year on all medical research, even if you redirected all that money into clinical trials, you would be lucky to produce a handful of drugs each year.
- emodendroket 11y agoWhy would you assume that in a situation where the entire pharmaceutical industry was nationalized there would not be any more revenue going to those programs? Presumably 1) a government who chose to nationalize them would also direct more tax dollars toward them 2) at least some of the revenue pharmaceutical companies are seeing now would go to government manufacturers instead. This is academic, perhaps, given the likelihood of it happening.
- monocasa 11y agoHonestly I think single payer healthcare in the US gets you 95% of the way there. At that point the government is in control of most of the revenue to the pharmaceutical companies leaving them in a much better negotiating position. It even makes sense to then bring some of the pharmaceutical production "in house" to cut costs since you're de facto paying for all of the pharmaceutical research anyway.
- RogerL 11y agoSo, I have a great but perhaps hare brained new idea for a drug/treatment. I'm willing to throw my tens of millions (heh) at it. Instead I have to go ask permission from the government, fight for funds, wait for approval, build massive infrastructure just to prove to the government I'm not wasting their money, and so on? I've worked on government contracts - defense - most of my career. It is not a model of innovation, low costs, fast delivery, friction-less pivots, and the like. It's a story of incumbents, outdated regulations (waterfall for the win!), inability to get money for great ideas, buckets of money thrown at bad ideas, cronyism, lobbying, you get the idea. It's trivial, and lazy, to talk about "big pharma" - to paint them as evil. Yes, there is plenty of less than stellar activity, and I had a gf that was in the business. But she also worked for a small start up that would probably be impossible under your model. That world is full of idealistic people that want to do good in the world. And yes, there is also unsavory business practices. But so much good has come from people with a dream. Bethesda is the pharma equivalent of SF in tech. Lots of money flowing, lots of great ideas, lots of moon shots, lots of quick failures, lots of success. It ain't ideal (great ideas, no funding, for example), but I'd suggest your idea needs substantial sketching out to explain how it would successfully replace this sort of activity. edit: my first job was working for a small company that contracted for NIH. In my short time there I heard so many stories of research being started, then something becomes the hot topic of the day, funding is withdrawn to throw it at this new topic, and the old project is left to die. Not that the new topic was a bad thing to pursue, but if you keep switching focus before getting results you are wasting tons of money. The NIH is regularly criticized for taking only 1 approach to a problem - investigate drug X or treatment Y. It's unbelievably hard to convince Congress that you should spend a ton of money on a research program, but then go and run 10 other programs that assume that that research program will not pan out. No, that's stupid. It's incredibly believable. I recall pulling all nighters, being called on the phone by congressmen or their aides, trying to pull data together for a presentation on the hill to get or continue funding. Ultimately politicians were making research and health decisions. Madness. Everyone I worked with had their hearts in the right place (beware the easy, lazy assumptions!). Individual politicians that I've run across are intelligent and trying to do the right thing as they understand it, and often that understanding is very sophisticated. But the system doesn't have a heart, whether that system is capitalism, start ups, or government.
- pessimizer 11y ago"The Benefits and Savings of Publicly-Funded Clinical Trials of Prescription Drugs" http://www.cepr.net/publications/reports/the-benefits-and-savings-of-publicly-funded-clinical-trials-of-prescription-drugs http://www.cepr.net/publications/reports/the-benefits-and-sa...
- lstroud 11y agoWhat's the last thing you bought that was manufactured by government. If you think prices are high now, then go look at prices of non subsidized government manufactured products. I think you will change your mind.
- clavalle 11y agoI buy information from the government all of the time. It is cheap and very high quality -- authoritative, in fact.
- mason240 11y agoIt's really shocking to such an anti-technological development comment on site about technological development. If the federal government had locked down all IT development in the 1980s as you proposing they do for pharmaceuticals, we wouldn't have this forum to comment on, much less the industry it is built around.
- JulianMorrison 11y agoIt really isn't comparable. Computers are tools. Drugs are health. They are a public good and a natural human right. Holding people's health hostage is unacceptable whether you do it with a knife in an alley, or a capitalist health system. Mixing them up like the USA system does is a category error.
- if_by_whisky 11y agoYour solution would stop innovation in any industry
- clavalle 11y agoBecause innovation cannot exist outside a purely market driven system?
- Lawtonfogle 11y agoImproving things just to improve them and research just for curiosity's sake are foreign concepts to those running the markets.
- vonmoltke 11y agoTo be fair, they are foreign concepts to a lot of people in general.
- mvanvoorden 11y agoInnovation happens because people are curious and want to make their (or other's) lives easier, this has nothing to do with patents, or if it's private or government run. Want to see real innovation? See for example the home made radio receivers people made in WWII, that fit in a small tin can, or visit an Amish settlement (http://kk.org/thetechnium/amish-hackers-a/ http://kk.org/thetechnium/amish-hackers-a/). Not to mention hacker/maker spaces and fablabs, which all work on open source principles and sustain themselves through donations or member fees.
- hiram112 11y agoFrom what I've heard, the cost of research is already heavily nationalized via the NIH and other grants. In typical US fashion, though, the profits are privatized. Actually, I don't believe letting the government take over would be good in the long run. The most direct fix would be to immediately revoke the various laws that disallow American citizens and companies from buying approved drugs in foreign markets at massively reduced prices and then reselling them in the US. Big pharma has for years now been slashing their US workforce and moving to third world countries. Another example of labor getting to compete in the global market, while capital enjoys privileged advantages.
- ksherlock 11y agoBe careful what you wish for. Do you think birth control pills or Plan B would exist today (consider Griswold vs Connecticut, 1965) with nationalized drug creation? Do you lament the government didn't spent billions developing a drug to cure homosexuality, once considered a mental illness?
- cheald 11y agoIf this were the case, chances are very good that this drug wouldn't exist at all. Drug R&D would become politically driven, with earmarks being given by politicians which benefit their constituents rather than actually advancing the state of the art. Public money would be poured into research for drugs which address ailments in the public consciousness, rather than into drugs which may actually have a chance of success. You really don't want medical science led by popular opinion.