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FTFY...
Big Pharma claims lower prices will mean giving up miracle ~~medications~~ executive pay and bonuses.
Seems like a good reason to nationalize the industry.
It pretty much already is. All major drug discoveries this century received at least as much public funding as private.
And despite helping to foot the bill no money ends up going back to the public.
And public ownership of patents for drugs discovered by public institutions is explicitly forbidden by law.
Wtf that’s so stupid
Assuming lower prices were mandated in the future, what is their alternative? Develop zero new medications and subsist on the current drugs they offer with soon to expire patents? I doubt their competitors will be sitting idly by waiting for their eventual demise. Their argument is so superficial.
I doubt their competitors will be sitting idly by waiting for their eventual demise
That's why you do M&As with your profits until there aren't any competitors left
Aren't most of the RND costs paid for through government grants and donations..
Miracles don’t happen.
Penicillin was a kind of miracle. But it wasn't locked in a vault and used to extort a handful of wealthy people for every penny they were worth.
The real miracle of penicillin was in how it got such universal adoption and use in so little time.
Science isn’t a miracle. It’s the hard work of scientists. Perhaps pharmaceutical companies should be required to operate with the same transparency as nonprofits.
Won’t somebody think of the jobs in their marketing departments that have bigger budgets than the R&D departments?!?
Even if they're right, that just means I won't be able to afford those "Miracle Medications" anyway...
How could they possibly derive profits from drugs nearly wholly theorized and funded through government grants? Think of the shareholders and their inability to siphon your taxes into their pockets! Think about them often, especially when you pass by their offices visible through brittle glass. Let them know your feelings.
They aren't wholly theorized and funded by the government.
By far the most expensive step of drug development is the phase 3 clinical trial, the final stage before a drug can be released. The government doesn't fund those at all. Government mostly funds pre-clinical trials (ie in animals or tissue culture) which are way cheaper.
The average government grant for a biomed research proposal is nearly $600,000.
The average phase 3 clinical trial costs $20 million.
Should be a non-issue for them to fund the billions in research grants afforded to universities, then. Privatizing profits and socializing the initial investment. Just saying, I’d like a hundred extra dollars per year. Were these entities so beneficent as to avoid bankrupting people forced to use their medications, I might feel differently.
Government-funded research is typically basic science research. It results in general knowledge that is usable by anyone, ie it does not support a specific product. No pharma company will pay for something that helps competitors as much (or possibly more) than it helps them.
For example, government-funded research showed how injected mRNA could be directly absorbed and expressed by human cells in tissue culture. That remarkable discovery can be used by any pharma company to make a product. So pharma companies started developing various mRNA vaccines, and testing them in humans (Moderna, Pfizer, etc). But no pharma company would have funded the initial research that showed this was possible.
Thanks for weighing in. Is there somewhere I can learn more about this? Big Pharma getting rich off tax payer funded research is an often repeated claim on internet forums, and I’d like to educate myself some more on this topic. Thanks!
In general, I think "Big Pharma gets rich off taxpayer funded research" is kind of like "Ford gets rich off taxpayer funded roads" or "Apple gets rich from taxpayer funded schools". They are true in one sense, but that doesn't mean those companies would pay for those things. That's why government ends up paying for common goods.
Note that "Big Pharma gets rich off taxpayer funded research" is different from "Big Pharma charges more than necessary to cover its own research costs." You can find a pretty good analysis of those costs here.
Without price controls only the rich will be able to afford those "miracle" cures anyway.
This hits the point already. Look at those weight loss drugs that help people lose weight and are needed by certain other people.
Look at all the celebrities all of a sudden on them and regular people's insurance won't cover them. The regular folks who need them have trouble getting them as a result.
The idea that better drugs will be discovered by AI is laughable, though. It can help the search, but it can't predict the trial outcomes well. The system is too complex, and we don't have the data.
AI will cut down the time it takes, which is still helpful.
I wouldn't believe anything Big Pharma says.
Big Pharma is so fucking greedy we're already starting to run out of useful new antibiotics because they aren't as profitable as Big Pharma wants.
Let's not conflate the business side of pharma and the science is pharmacology. The main reason we don't have new antibiotics is mostly due to the evolutionary arms race against bacteria that quickly develop resistance typically within a year.
No conflation. It's both. It's because everything is privatized / sacrificed on the altar of capitalism. Yes, bacteria evolves quickly, but that doesn't explain the huge gap in development efforts. It's a complication, definitely. But, I reject the idea that this is the primary reason. More like an excuse.
Until they can cure cancer they have no leverage
Right. Because a miracle medication wouldn't make a ton of money anyway what with it being a fucking miracle medication.
Giving up miracle medications from them
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half of budgets for pharma companies is spent on marketing. Discourage that and they will be forced to spend more on R&D.
You can pass a law to ban pharma commercials on the grounds that prescriptions should be prescribed by doctors. You could also simply tax marketing spending as though it were the same as profits, applying corporate taxes to marketing spending.
How many people already suffer today or die early because of inadequate care and lack of affordable medications?
Fuck their hypothetical diminished future profits and solve today's real problems that will save lives and increase quality of life.
~~Miracle~~ massively profitable medicine.
Wolves explain why eating sheep is actually good for the sheep. If elves are forced to become vegetarians, the sheep will suffer more...
Big pharma is full of shit. And the fact that they are admitting that the only way they'll look for a "miracle drug" to extort sick people's money by grossly overcharging is if they can extort sick people's money on current drugs by grossly overcharging is fucking disgusting. They all should be hung.
this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2024
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