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by lotsofpulp 729 days ago
>There's really no reason why a drug for something affecting tens of millions of people should cost so much.

The reason is becoming very rich is the carrot for taking the big risks to develop the medicine, because you will likely fail for years and years, and maybe never succeed.

If the discussion is changing to limit how rich someone should be able to get, that is a different topic about tax policy and wealth redistribution, not medicine prices.
2 comments
Tade0 729 days ago
> The reason is becoming very rich is the carrot for taking the big risks to develop the medicine, because you will likely fail for years and years, and maybe never succeed.

Not how it works. It's rare for a drug to reach the most expensive phase of clinical trials without demonstrating efficacy.

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lotsofpulp 729 days ago
What does that have to do with anything? “Develop” includes everything it takes to start getting paid for it.

Surely the equity is not left up for grabs for cheap by the time it is a guaranteed to earn the owner lots of money.

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Tade0 729 days ago
It's not a "big risk" in any capacity because drugs with low probability of success usually never reach the phase where they accumulate $3bln in costs.

The pharma industry has over a century of experience in managing risks of this sort, which is why it's so profitable.

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lotsofpulp 729 days ago
Risk and reward are proportional, absent corruption. Managing risk does not make it disappear. Managing risk is what people get paid for, it’s the hard part that requires knowledge and expertise.

If there was no risk, then there would be no failed pharmaceutical businesses. If it was so easy to take medicines from idea to market and make a ton of money, people wouldn’t be wasting their time on buying stocks for other businesses.

It is also simultaneously possible that US patent law, as implemented with medicines, is too rewarding to pharma companies.

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mcphage 729 days ago
It’s all the same conversation.
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lotsofpulp 729 days ago
Except it is not. One is about price controls, which distort supply and demand.

The other is about societal harmony.

For example, price controls on medicine results in society incentivizing more efforts to be put forth toward slinging advertisements, which is obviously not a good thing.

Then you say, well put price controls on advertisements, in which case..why chase the tail when it would be far less corruptive and complex to subject everyone to the same rules via tax and welfare policy.

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