Wouldn't all these problems disappear if the entire drug industry was nationalized? Once you remove the profit angle, there is no more incentive to raise prices dramatically, make minute changes to a molecule to extend your patents, or only focus research on medicine which is the most likely to make money.
I suspect the opposite. The Scientific American estimates the cost of rbinging a new drug to market is 2.5B and that number has doubled over the past 10 years[1]. We need to find a way to allow tighter feedback loops, better data flow and less regulation without purpose. We have amazing technology that allows continual monitoring of vital signs and rapid blood tests etc. If our laws could evolve with our technology we would be in great shape. That would, of course, require elected officials to be qualified in various disciplines, act in the public's best interest and not accept money from lobbyists.
Everyone agrees with that; all regulation that actually exists or has been proposed has/had a purpose behind it.
Individuals may disagree with whether the purpose is desirable, whether the regulation effectively serves the purpose, and whether (assuming they agree that the purpose is beneficial and it is actually served in effect by the regulation) the beneficial effect of serving the purpose is worth any costs that the regulation creates, but those are different issues than "regulation without purpose".
> We need unbiased medical experts to propose a system that works which has the following charachteristics:
Unbiased medical experts are not particularly likely to be experts on three points you suggest are critical, since none of those are actually even remotely medical questions.
> I suspect the opposite. The Scientific American estimates the cost of rbinging a new drug to market is 2.5B and that number has doubled over the past 10 years[1].
So?
> We need to find a way to allow tighter feedback loops, better data flow and less regulation without purpose.
Everybody is all for that. Obviously, the question of what is "without purpose" may depend on whom you ask.
> That would, of course, require elected officials to be qualified in various disciplines, act in the public's best interest and not accept money from lobbyists.
You can't expect politicians to be qualified as everything, but you should expect their cabinets to have a number of specialists.
There is still incentive to have high prices, even if the organization is "non-profit" or governmental. At some point, that money reaches someone who has the authority to spend it, and that person is always going to want more money and be incentivized to get it. This happens whether the beneficiary is a government appointee or not.
A free market is generally considered superior because the element of competition keeps the vendor(s) honest. If it were illegal for others to make drugs, I would expect the result to be much like it is now for companies that hold patents on drugs; charge as much as possible for as long as possible, until you're forced to bring the price down by competitors.
Anywhere you find exorbitant prices you'll find high barriers to entry. These are specifically designed to keep competition minimal and make it so once competition does clear the hurdle and enter the market, they won't have much interest in shaking up the existing structure too much. The government saying "only we can make drugs now" is a pretty high barrier to entry.
> A free market is generally considered superior because the element of competition keeps the vendor(s) honest. If it were illegal for others to make drugs, I would expect the result to be much like it is now for companies that hold patents on drugs; charge as much as possible for as long as possible, until you're forced to bring the price down by competitors.
Why would you expect that? If you take, eg, the French railways, they have for a long time charged reasonable prices for a good service with very good territorial coverage. Similarly, state-owned energy monopolies generally don't gouge out their customers. As for the "honesty" of big pharma, are we talking about the same entities repeatedly caught hiding unfavorable studies or plainly bribing doctors?
Money going exclusively towards research that is focused on earning more money might not be ideal, sure.
But in a nationalized drug industry, money will instead go exclusively towards "research" conducted by those who are best at filling out forms and schmoozing with politicians. I think that would arguably be worse.
Are you under the impression that big pharma looks at lobbying with disgust?
As for "research" as you put it, I was under the impression that a number of countries already fund medical research. I'm not privy to how much "filling out forms" and "schmoozing with politicians" this involves, but I have a hard time imagining the methods and goals being worse than the "best practices" of the private sector.
> I'm not privy to how much "filling out forms" and "schmoozing with politicians" this involves
My friends reported that their (highly educated and intelligent) supervisors in their university labs spent almost all their time doing funding applications instead of research.
I imagine it's not the same in the private sector, you go to work and spend your day working not running around begging for funding because the company is already rich and has already decided to fund the project.
AFAICT in the private sector its very often the same (and not just in pharma, but in biotech more generally), because in order to pursue a project a principal scientist will need to sell a business plan around it to the business management of the company so that they will devote company resources to it, which may involve securing (or identifying and waiting for the business-side folks to secure) funding via grants, cooperative ventures, etc. to do it.
If the company has a big cash stockpile (e.g., because it is either a well-funded startup or a well-established big player) the likelihood of needing to secure outside funding may be less, but the scientist will still likely have to sell the idea to the business team.
Yes, but the business team is more likely to be competent in evaluating the business plans than the government. After all, they've done this sort of thing before and they're incentivized to be objective and develop a popular, effective drug so they can rake in the cash.
The government has other priorities (diversity, "fairness in procurement", getting some of the money back in political donations, etc.). That's why incompetents like CGI Federal get massive contracts like healthcare.gov. They're clearly bad at writing software and excellent at navigating procurement.
I don't want the pharmaceutical research industry, bad as it is, looking like that.
