Care about people, try it bro.
- Thread starter Duck_walk
- Start date
With a name like Bueno Tuco we can only hope you get deported.
Its the kids fault he was born with Type 1 diabetes and he should have to pay the rest of his life for high priced insulin despite the fact that it takes pennies to make it. Murica
To that, I would ask, is it MY fault a kid was born with Type 1 diabetes? If not, what responsibility for them do I really have?
Do I think it's evil to jack up the process of life saving medications when it's entirely unnecessary? Yes. Which is why there needs to be more competition in the market which will lower prices, not necessarily government intervention.
Here we go again with the “competition will fix it” nonsense. How do you propose we make this market competitive?
Reduce patent lengths on medications so generic drugs can be manufactured by competitors thus reducing drug prices.
Current patent lengths are approximately 20 years, reduce that patent to 3-5 years and you will do a lot of good for a lot of people.
Eh, that would almost certainly destroy drug research. Plus lots of the extreme cost drugs have small/smallish markets to where they are going to naturally tend to only have 1-2 manufacturers.
There's a reason basically every country with a pulse effectively uses price controls for Rx. It works.
It could actually spur drug research. If Pfizer knows it can only price gouge for 3-5 years it will force them to innovate to stay ahead of the market.
For common ailments (diabetes, asthma, allergies) this does nothing but help people and will still make big pharma incredibly wealthy.
They can already charge whatever they want for 20 years. Why, exactly, would changing it to 3-5 years incentivize MORE research? It doesn't make a lick of sense.
Common ailments are also the items that are the most successful under the current regime, because the "maintenance meds" that people take for years while under patent are the most profitable drugs out there. Hence why they would see the most impact from such a legislative change. Why would you invest more in a diabetes treatment that someone will take for 3 years vs. one that someone will take for 15 years?
There's parts of the patent system that need addressing (the current system overweights redevelopment of slight reformulations, it overweights maintenance treatments vs. one-time use drugs, there are special rules for biologics and orphan drugs, etc.), but violently shortening the period of patent protection is not high on the list of patent law/science experts who want to lower Rx costs and improve the societal impact of patent regulation.
It's one thing to tweak it; it's another to lower to the point that it is mostly eliminated.
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