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Comment by lotsofpulp | Hacker News Reader

The government admitted it too:

https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/covid-19-unapproved-...

The root problem is US taxpayers should be directly paying for these studies to prove and disprove medicines, but apparently, the budget for that is not politically possible, and instead we have politicians giving away monopoly rights so the burden of the study will fall mostly on afflicted people who need the medicine.

It is crazy how there is so much crowing about high medicine prices, when the US already has world class research in the form of higher education facilities, and it could just officially research and develop medicines and put them in the public domain.

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And that’s just because we have a clear comparison point for how much these drugs cost before the FDA intervention.

For the other drugs, we have no clue how much FDA rules are raising the prices by. That’s scary.

Not politically possible == pharma has plenty of money to line politician’s pockets and poor college students do not

Can't you "just" vote for other politicians that aren't susceptible to be paid off by big pharma?

Ah; username.

In case you're not kidding though, no. A politician who pisses off big business in America loses even the support of their own party.

The media ignores them, smears them, then grinds them into dust to make an example of them. Their social media pages are de-ranked, and an army of bots highlights their weak points while attacking their strong points.

Their opponents in every election get funded just enough to win, however much that is; even elections against others in their own party.

And if they're still somehow successful after all that, there's other, darker things that can happen.

The politicians you get to vote for are propelled there by their connections iwth big businesses. The corruption is complete and voters play no role in policy change

No, you cannot because they are not on the ballot.

They are not on the ballot because successfully getting attention when running for office requires huge amounts of money.

It's even more depressing than that. Those who are on ballots are there because they've gotten Corporate America's stamp of approval. The ones who don't have said approval never make it on the ballots, and in the extremely infrequent case that they do (see Bernie Sanders) , they are there so corporate friendly politicians and media outlets can mock them as a subtle reminder to the rest of the country that the corporations own the country and it's not worth stepping out of line.

The thing is that more often than not, that's not really how it works. While outright bribery does happen ("we may have a job opening after your term that you might be suitable for wink wink, nudge nudge") this is the exception rather than the rule.

Most of the power from these organisations is just from having politicians attention and ears: if you constant hear viewpoint A from people you like and respect and rarely or never hear opposing viewpoints, then, well, don't be surprised if politicians lean towards viewpoint A. This is basically what "lobbying" is. The problem is that talking to democratically elected representatives is a basic right, and not something you can (or, IMHO, should) take away.

What we do need is better representation of the public interest and balance things better, somehow...

> US taxpayers should be directly paying for these studies to prove and disprove medicines

I think you are right people should pay for it? I could pay for it, but who would run the study? Are they going to be efficient? Or is it going to be a waste of money? Could EU pick this up? They are trying to be a bastion of science.

The EU is not close to being a global bastion of science by any measure relative to the US or China afaik. EU doesnt come close in terms of funding nor papers published nor any other measure that I could think of.

Correct me if I'm wrong, I might very well be.

Is it going to be efficient taxpayers pay via increased Medicare and health insurance costs to market/lobby and pay for profits a private company needs to gamble that much on developing a medicine, that may not even be that effective?

https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/10/politics/aduhelm-alzheimers-d...

Drug companies have the second or third highest profits and profit margins after tech companies. Sounds like a lot of “efficiency” could be gained by taxpayers taking the risk of R&D themselves.

> it could just officially research and develop medicines and put them in the public domain

I don't think that's true. At least not for rare diseases. There are thousands of them and they impact very small populations. The current cost to develop a drug and get it through trials is > 1 billion dollars.

Are you suggesting the US government does not have > $1B dollars?

An obvious improvement is to just be OK when another serious regulator approved the drug too. If, say Europe or Australia calls it safe and effective, and the market is small, then approve with their study.

> An obvious improvement is to just be OK when another serious regulator approved the drug too. If, say Europe or Australia calls it safe and effective, and the market is small, then approve with their study.

I wish this were true, however history paints a different picture

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide_scandal

Boeing 737 max comes to my mind.

Although it is other way round: the world stopped trusting US certification.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_MAX

it could just officially research and develop medicines and put them in the public domain

It did exactly that, until the Bayh-Dole act in the 1980s.

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