Please provide conclusive proof this process is not consequence of neoliberal policies, aimed at defunding public spending and encouraging for-profit spinoffs, aligning the research process to its ideology
A very large portion of R&D costs for drugs are in doing phase 3 clinical trials. These will always be expensive because you have to recruit and closely monitor several thousand people with a relevant condition to determine if a treatment is better than existing alternatives and what sort of side effects a medication has. Many drugs which were developed by academia using federal dollars and which passed phase 1 and 2 trials fail phase 3. Pretty much every phase 3 trial is paid for by private industry.
I don’t agree that phase 3 trials must be that expensive.
Currently they cost ~19 million each which is frankly not that big of a deal. A larger issue is only ~15% of drugs make it through the process. With ~20 new drugs a year this only adds up to 2.5 billion per year which a frankly a drop in the bucket compared to drug costs.
Seems likely either drugs would end up being used, or government would stop funding drug R&D research.
Saying funding would continue without any benifits seems to be the least likely outcome. Personally, I would be fine stopping all public drug research, but I suspect more people would want to continue...
Presumably, if they continue to fund research, public entities would then pay to finish the process. This would mean either fewer drugs or more money for R&D.
In the end when you change one part of the process you need to assume other parts of a related system will change in some manor.
The ones doing basic research today have zero capability to do the development part. So you'd be looking at spending a ton of money to try and develop the needed expertise to bring a molecule all the way to market. Would that also include commercialization - things like marketing?
I don’t know. Clinical trials can already be outsourced, so that’s not a major issue. And only two countries allow for direct to consumer drug marketing so that’s clearly unnecessary.
Honestly, this is simply not going to happen in the US so it’s hard to say what’s realistic.