This article misses the point.
People hate pharmaceuticals because of ridiculously high drug costs, and that's about it. If they can't produce drugs at profit without gouging potential end users then it should be nationalized or subsidized.
https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/how-other-countries-freeloa...
A common claim by big-pharma defenders is that if you take away the gouging aspect, drug development will stop. Is there some way we can test this experimentally on a subset of the drug market?
It is totally possible to develop drugs without that moat, it just requires getting the money from somewhere.
I have no idea which method would produce better outcomes. Back when there was more science leadership at large pharma, I thought they would be more likely to take crazy bets that work out, that wouldn't necessarily happen at an NIH grant review panel. But last I checked most upper management in pharma are people that tout a PhD on their name, but it's for a field outside of a relevant science.
US taxpayers seem to be able to find hundreds billions for R&D of fighter jets and aircraft carriers. Perhaps this is not as necessary as developing medicine. Or not invading and occupying random countries.
1. Secure maritime trade for all. Protection against piracy and gone are the days when countries would just steal each other's cargo. 2. Global trading currency that is backed by the biggest economy in the world. 3. Establishment of a global trade network. Industrialised countries have access to more natural resources than ever without needing colonies.
Remember how the world was before the American Order. Colonies and hostility all over the world. Europe was in two world wars and would have probably been in another one with the Sovjets.
Generally speaking, people trust the American rule of law and trust that the US will help her allies. This only made relevant by having an ultra beefy military. It's hard to put a price on these things, and which portion the US tax payers have to pay.
Note that the current administration wants to cut back on these costs. European countries are benefitting a lot from the American Order, and should perhaps shoulder more of the costs.
There is zero valid reason the world’s mightiest military should need mercenaries.
A far better plan to remain as the world leader would be to court the world’s top minds and lure them into living in the US permanently. And all it would have required is handing out green cards at graduation. But that is another topic.
Look at China’s aggression in the past couple of months, especially with India. It would never have happened 10 or 20 years back with a strong America. Yes, the US does serve as the world’s policeman.
The only way for the US to have been able to threaten China without using force would have been to sow political discord and break it up into smaller countries. The US has 330M people, mostly getting older. China has 1.4B. Both have nukes so it’s not in anyone’s interest to engage militarily, and both have sufficient resources to not have to depend on someone else. And both need each other economically.
China has India right next door.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/07/business/gilead-truvada-h...
is corruption only explanation of how this happened?
Nope, drugs sales in the EU alone are enough to cover pharmaceutical R&D costs worldwide. What they aren't enough to cover is Marketing costs, but that's OK since most EU countries don't allow direct marketing of drugs.
That's what the US covers. Not quite so noble sounding that you're covering the cost of advertising though, is it?
Pharmaceutical R&D spending in 2015: USA $47B, Europe: $33B.
Total drug sales Europe 2015: $190B
For the second point, cost spreading helps particular people in particular circumstances, but doesn't lower overall cost. You're just running a wealth transfer or insurance program in addition at that point.
Regarding You're just running a wealth transfer or insurance program in addition at that point. Yes, that would be a major purpose of nationalizing drug R&D and manufacturing. You could say the same about every public service.
https://www.fda.gov/drugs/drug-information-consumers/impact-...
The FDA identified several benefits of DTC ads.
58 percent [of physicians surveyed] agreed strongly that DTC ads make the drugs seem better than they really are.
Physicians thought the ads did not convey information about risks and benefits equally well. Seventy-eight percent of physicians believe their patients understand the possible benefits of the drug very well or somewhat, compared to 40 percent who believe their patients understand the possible risks, and 65 percent believe DTC ads confuse patients about the relative risks and benefits of prescription drugs. In addition, about 75 percent of physicians surveyed believed that DTC ads cause patients to think that the drug works better than it does, and many physicians felt some pressure to prescribe something when patients mentioned DTC ads.
Eight percent of physicians said they felt very pressured to prescribe the specific brand-name drug when asked.
Doctors believe that patients understand that they need to consult a health care professional about appropriate treatment. Eighty-two percent responded either "very well" or "somewhat" when asked whether they believe that their patients understand that only a doctor can decide whether a drug is right for them.
Note the last point means that 18% of the doctors believed that their patients thought they knew better than the doctor about whether or not a drug is right for them.
The few positive aspects, about patients being better informed about drug therapies that might help them, could be solved by making the monthly journal info I described available online. People go to Google and type in their symptoms and/or the name of their disease if they know it, and end up on sites like drugs.com and webmd.com. If Google were indexing the journal I described, and those other sites pulled from it too (publishing license should allow that, as it would be publicly funded), then patients would see all of the good information about the drugs, without the advertising bias.
On the other point, subsidizing drugs for those who need them is a perfectly reasonable goal. It just seemed to me (incorrectly, it appears) like you were suggesting this cost shifting lowers the total cost.
Even if run by the government, you’d still need to market (educate) about new drugs.
And R&D in the big pharma firms is spread out across the entire population. That diabetes drug that sold $1B last year is paying for the cancer R&D this year.
[0] https://www.gilead.com/news-and-press/press-room/press-relea...
Why not free the intellectual property here instead?