this post was submitted on 30 Mar 2024
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[–] [email protected] 79 points 7 months ago (2 children)
  1. When do they lose the patent
  2. Can we please make drug companies lose their parents faster?
[–] [email protected] 81 points 7 months ago (1 children)

This seems harsh. Maybe they should just lose their patents sooner.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 7 months ago (1 children)

It worked for Batman and he grew up wanting to help others.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

If by “help” you mean buy cool toys and beat the shit out of people while wearing skin-tight rubber and lycra (not that I’m kink-shaming, mind)…

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

As Bruce Wayne he dumps a ridiculous amount of money into Gotham. Food banks, orphanages, hospitals, schools, employment programs, all funded by Bruce Wayne or Wayne Enterprises.

Any other city would be a utopia with the philanthropic support he gives; it's not his fault Gotham is literally cursed

[–] [email protected] 20 points 7 months ago (5 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Those numbers will be manipulated. Good line of thought, keep working on the solution.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago

Yeah obviously, maybe a time limit then but that can also be moved somehow.. The only solution to greedy corps is a solid government...

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

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?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago

Also if you use federal (or state) funding for the research and development, you lose it faster.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

You can squeeze the rich for 2 years then it's generic

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Price limits and such are fine but you can't beat generics for putting pressure on price.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

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.