Dec 7 (Reuters) - The Biden Administration on Thursday announced it is setting new policy that will allow it to seize patents for medicines developed with government funding if it believes their prices are too high.
The policy creates a roadmap for the government’s so-called march-in rights, which have never been used before. They would allow the government to grant additional licenses to third parties for products developed using federal funds if the original patent holder does not make them available to the public on reasonable terms.
Under the draft roadmap, seen by Reuters, the government will consider factors including whether only a narrow set of patients can afford the drug, and whether drugmakers are exploiting a health or safety issue by hiking prices.
“We’ll make it clear that when drug companies won’t sell taxpayer funded drugs at reasonable prices, we will be prepared to allow other companies to provide those drugs for less,” White House adviser Lael Brainard said on a press call.
How about we just get rid of drug patents altogether…
What would incentivise researching new drugs when all competitors could just copy it, reaping the benefits without cost.
They’re paid by the gov to research already, thats the incentive
All drug development is paid fully by government?
Subsidized generally.
It follows a similar model as military R&D. They request money and have no real obligation to deliver a functioning or viable final product.
And even if it wasnt, a substantial amount IS funded by the gov, enough to have progress made without capitalist vultures reaping exorbitant profits off of the misery of the proletariat
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Or we could just make drug research and development government funded. Problem solved.
Don’t most of these companies use government subsidies anyway?
Yeah, I mean this posts title literally says government funded drugs. We gotta pay for the research with our taxes and then out of pocket for the damn thing.
You mean that thing you already do?
That’s what I said? And I don’t doubt there’s research going on right now that is funded by the US tax payers.
This would be a perfect slogan. We’re asking that government subsidized medical research be free to the public. We aren’t asking companies to research complex medications without any compensation. Make it so the subsidy results in a net profit for the company (which it probably already does) and remove the private sales. Everyone wins, and we aren’t stupidly paying twice.
That’s a lot of words to say you’re very narrow minded or are drinking too much kool aid.
There’s many ways to solve this that don’t involve us handing exclusivity to mega corporations.
Good thing there are no patents on the wheel, huh? I guess we should be lucky any human invented anything for the millenia humans have been doing so before billionaire parasites came around to save us from ourselves, eh?
Does bootlicking come naturally to you or did something happen to make you like this?
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Flattery isn’t going to help you here, Clyde.
Your glorious “free market” has been exposed - and no amount of luxury shoe polish you can pack onto your tongue will reverse that.
Read the headline again… this is talking about government-funded patents.
If the pharmaceutical companies are using government funding to pay for their research, the government and the people it represents should reap some of the benefits. Stop being a shill for billion dollar companies that lobby hard in corrupt efforts to get government $s to fund their record profits.
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Oh honey. Have you never heard of Jonas Salk? Do you think the pyramids were built for profit? Humans have done things for reasons other than profit. You’ve been brainwashed or are just making ridiculous statements.
Uh, weren’t the pyramids built explicitly for the profit/benefit in the afterlife for those few rulers set to be entombed in them, at the cost of many human lives? I’m having a hard time thinking of something more self centered/personal profit focused right now.
You can certainly take that interpretation, but it had nothing to do with hitting quarterly profit goals. My point is humans create, build and make things and have for millennia before capitalism and profit existed as a motive. The idea that humans wouldn’t do anything if not for the invisible hand of the market is a modern fiction. The idea that we wouldn’t invent life saving drugs without the incentive to make a buck is absurd.
Just because quarterly profit goals are a modern invention doesn’t mean personal interest and self-aggrandizement are. Humans, mostly, created, built, and made things for their own self-interest for millennia. Not saying that’s how it has to be, not saying we should base our civilization on that, but pretending that greed was invented with modern capitalism is silly.
yeah and I provided a range of behaviors from a literal pharaoh to Jonas Salk. What the fuck is up with everyone’s need to jump in with their WELL ACKTUALLY shit
Cool? Dunno how the existence of an altruistic person, or multiple altruistic people, disproves the prevalence of greed in human history. No one said that literally every human to ever exist was exclusively greedy. Talking about trends here.
Cool, great discussion. Glad we had it.