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If you look up the budget numbers for how these pharma companies operate, very little money goes into R&D as a fraction of revenue. The supposedly high cost of bringing a drug to market is a talking point used to justify high prices, not something that is necessarily based in reality. They are absolutely not barely breaking even.

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Much of large pharma R&D effectively happens through asset acquisition of smaller entities, and I don’t think that is reflected well by budget numbers.

Tufts numbers are generally regarded as high. Booth at Atlas puts the cost ranging from $300M for a drug that can be developed on a lean process (like Eli’s Chorus) to $1.6B for something developed by large pharma. Regardless of where in the range you are, it’s risky and it isn’t cheap.

Which brings me to my original question: if not assisted by the exclusivity provided by IP, how should drug development costs be paid for? And beyond that, how should lifecycle costs be paid for?

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