this post was submitted on 30 Mar 2024
224 points (100.0% liked)
World News
22058 readers
56 users here now
Breaking news from around the world.
News that is American but has an international facet may also be posted here.
Guidelines for submissions:
- Where possible, post the original source of information.
- If there is a paywall, you can use alternative sources or provide an archive.today, 12ft.io, etc. link in the body.
- Do not editorialize titles. Preserve the original title when possible; edits for clarity are fine.
- Do not post ragebait or shock stories. These will be removed.
- Do not post tabloid or blogspam stories. These will be removed.
- Social media should be a source of last resort.
These guidelines will be enforced on a know-it-when-I-see-it basis.
For US News, see the US News community.
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
There should be a limit, like they lose exclusivity when they break even plus 5% or 10% of the total cost of RD or something.
Those numbers will be manipulated. Good line of thought, keep working on the solution.
Yeah obviously, maybe a time limit then but that can also be moved somehow.. The only solution to greedy corps is a solid government...
Then they'd just fake the costs of R&D. The US has lots of money, so everyone is charging more; notice how they charge way less in other countries (like $150-250, which is only ≈4,000% markup). That the US average income ($70K) is way different than the US median income ($40K), except for District of Columbia ($80K)... well, whose fault is that?
Also if you use federal (or state) funding for the research and development, you lose it faster.
You can squeeze the rich for 2 years then it's generic
US states should probably set a price limit based on median income, like from Puerto Rico's $20K/yr, to District of Columbia's $80K/yr:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_median_wage_and_mean_wage
Price limits and such are fine but you can't beat generics for putting pressure on price.
True, but drugs do require some lengthy and expensive R&D.
Starting by isolating a target function, testing thousands of compounds in vitro, hundreds on mice, maybe a dozen on chimps, ~~soldiers~~, or ~~some minority~~... until human trials get approved, which normally take several years, until a drug gets approved for sale... then depending on how popular it becomes, sales may end up being larger or smaller.
Completely forbidding patents on drugs (AKA: government-allowed time-limited paid monopolies), would wipe out all private investors in that research.
Should all drug research be 100% government funded? That's how you get ~~corruption~~ lobbying.
Should the FDA controls —already not so tight— be removed? That's how you get snake oil salesmen (homeopathy, crystals, "praying it away", random herbal remedies, drugs cut with talcum, etc.).
If we still want the drugs to be developed, and be sold with a minimum of guarantees, the only reasonable solutions that come to mind, go through some sort of government intervention in pricing.
10 % would mean that more than 9 of 10 research projects need to succeed. The reality is closer to 0.5 of 10, which would require a profit of 2000 % of R&D. Rules like that would stop private funded research. Which is something we can debate, but it should be noted that this would just mean, that countries need to fund medical research, which is currently 270 billion per year, which is 20 % of the US budget. If you want to stop private medical research, you need to raise taxes – plain and simple.