[TomVDB]

The article references mentions $100B over a period of 7 years, or $14B per year.

That’s a decent chunk of money, but it’s important to put it in perspective. Pfizer alone spends around $10B per year on R&D. J&J: $12B. Merck: $13B.

[conanbatt]

The coronavirus probably shows patents to be a thorny mechanism for innovation. Pfizer might have a vax patent but then can't freely make money of it. If there were no patents, but they were the best manufacturers, might have been easier to have a freer market on it.

Patents necessarily put more capital investments into patentable work than unpatentable work, but that doesnt mean it is more efficient. I understand the principle of patents, but eventually you end up in heavy interventionism, state funding, litigation, etc. Best to do away of all of that imo.

[monocasa]

And how much of the expenditure goes anywhere useful? And remember that they're incentivized to report 15% of their revenue being spent on R&D for tax reasons.

That $100B is just for drugs that later got FDA approval, not the NIH grant budget.

[TomVDB]

If you’re going to make that argument, you also have to consider the opposite possibility: I’ve worked on (non-medical) projects with public funding in the past. One can only hope that my experience wasn’t representative for the amount waste of public money in the medical world.