[jasonjayr]

It's true that the US pours a lot more money into drug R&D, and I understand that a lot of push for more global + stronger patent law comes from pharmaceuticals. However, when medicines change owners, and then get 10x price hikes years after being developed (like EpiPens, or Generics that get a tweak + a new patent), the problem is not just repaying for the R&D.

The more serious problem, is that reforming the machine that is the US health care industry is going to cost a LOT of jobs. That is going to make any kind of meaningful reform very difficult.

[kethinov]

The small tweak = new patent loophole is easy to solve with patent abuse reform. The sting of the reduced profit margin by stopping patent abuse can be offset by making prizes for making stuff generic bigger than the profits they would get from patent abuse.

The job loss from transition to single payer is a tougher problem, but I would rather just rip that bandaid off than keep a lot of unnecessary insurance jobs around.