3 ms·

The answer is to publicly fund the R&D and claim only those drugs to be royalty-free. Private R&D can still fund development and set prices how they want. But

by zaroth 2y ago

The answer is to publicly fund the R&D and claim only those drugs to be royalty-free. Private R&D can still fund development and set prices how they want. But they’ll have to compete with publicly funded alternatives. The shame is that NIH already provides an incredible quantity of funding, but it certainly doesn’t result in the US getting any better drug prices…

spywaregorilla 2y ago
So, hypothetically, if the government is funding a research team to cure X; and a private research team discovers it first with no government funding, the US should just accept that and pay full price
- zaroth 2y ago
  That’s not really how patents work, unless this hypothetical is they are testing exactly the same substance? More likely they are two different treatments that maybe take the same general approach. If the publicly funded one is available at cost, the private one would have to be significantly better to make any money.
  - spywaregorilla 2y ago
    No need for it to be the same. The point is that research fails ALL THE TIME. It is trivially easy to believe that the public route, by chance and to no fault of the researcher's competence, does not work whereas the private one did. So what happens then? Because that is basically where we are now, it's just that the government lost money funding one particular idea. It would be great if the public developed useful, novel drugs. But if you're proposing a system where the private side can still develop them, patent them, and sell them at a high price; then it's not really different from today. You shouldn't assume that both parties would solve problems independently and redundantly. It doesn't even really make sense to pursue alternative development. If there's a cure for X; are you REALLY going to encourage public researchers to find a different cure for the same thing to try and lower the cost of the drug? That sounds like a very ineffective approach.

by zaroth 2y ago

spywaregorilla 2y ago

So, hypothetically, if the government is funding a research team to cure X; and a private research team discovers it first with no government funding, the US should just accept that and pay full price

zaroth 2y ago
That’s not really how patents work, unless this hypothetical is they are testing exactly the same substance? More likely they are two different treatments that maybe take the same general approach. If the publicly funded one is available at cost, the private one would have to be significantly better to make any money.
- spywaregorilla 2y ago
  No need for it to be the same. The point is that research fails ALL THE TIME. It is trivially easy to believe that the public route, by chance and to no fault of the researcher's competence, does not work whereas the private one did. So what happens then? Because that is basically where we are now, it's just that the government lost money funding one particular idea. It would be great if the public developed useful, novel drugs. But if you're proposing a system where the private side can still develop them, patent them, and sell them at a high price; then it's not really different from today. You shouldn't assume that both parties would solve problems independently and redundantly. It doesn't even really make sense to pursue alternative development. If there's a cure for X; are you REALLY going to encourage public researchers to find a different cure for the same thing to try and lower the cost of the drug? That sounds like a very ineffective approach.