| >This makes central planning remarkably easy compared to typical consumer goods. What if bureaucrats are much more risk averse than investors? We may end up with less drugs. The same things happens when taxpayers get too many stories of paying scientist salaries for things that fail. Letting investors and those more knowledgeable of markets and drugs might end up making drugs that wouldn't happen on taxpayer money only. >all it would take to expand that program to include later-phase clinical trials would be increased funding. [1] claims ~60 new drugs approved in 2018. [2] puts the cost of a new drug, plus post analysis, at $3B. This is already ~180B, perhaps not counting the ~80% of drugs that fail to make it to market. For scale, the entire NIH budget is ~12B; the money paid by the govt for drug research is a tiny part of the cost to get the drug to market, (otherwise more universities would start their own drug companies) Raising another 180B from taxpayers is no small feat, and if that could be done, it's not clear this is the best space to spend it. It may be much cheaper overall to let investors take the risks (and thus also get rewards). >A nationalized pharmaceutical industry that provides drugs at cost seems like it would be a tremendous boon to our society Agreed, assuming that it would truly cost less to do this. The govt is not terribly efficient at many things the market provides, from power to package delivery. The most cost efficient outcomes usually come from govt ensuring markets are competitive, then letting companies fight for sales, causing them to develop and fight over efficiency gains. A better fight might be to find ways to make the current market more competitive while still delivering results. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmunos/2019/01/14/2018-ne... [2] https://www.policymed.com/2014/12/a-tough-road-cost-to-devel... |
https://www.nih.gov/about-nih/what-we-do/budget