Dec 7 (Reuters) - The Biden Administration on Thursday announced it is setting new policy that will allow it to seize patents for medicines developed with government funding if it believes their prices are too high.
The policy creates a roadmap for the government’s so-called march-in rights, which have never been used before. They would allow the government to grant additional licenses to third parties for products developed using federal funds if the original patent holder does not make them available to the public on reasonable terms.
Under the draft roadmap, seen by Reuters, the government will consider factors including whether only a narrow set of patients can afford the drug, and whether drugmakers are exploiting a health or safety issue by hiking prices.
“We’ll make it clear that when drug companies won’t sell taxpayer funded drugs at reasonable prices, we will be prepared to allow other companies to provide those drugs for less,” White House adviser Lael Brainard said on a press call.
Wow. That’s good.
But I’m willing to bet lobbyists are going to decide what is deemed “too high”.
Lawyers and judges will decide. Any attempt to trigger this mechanism will set off a legal firestorm the likes of which has seldom been seen. And once it reaches the Supreme Court…
how about m4a like every other proper country
yeah but shareholders
Here’s a wild idea: make every citizen a shareholder in the country.
Imagine having voting rights at the board meeting
You are shareholder of the countries debt. Is that not enough for you?
you mean like gasp socialism?
That’s doesn’t make fat stacks of cash.
Technically no other country has M4A. All of them have supplemental private insurance, and the current M4A policy completely abolishes all of it.
I’m in favor of universal healthcare for essentials and allowing private insurance for supplementals, to start with. The ultimate goal would be to phase out insurance completely, but it’s unwise to jump ahead to it immediately since there currently aren’t any systems that do so and we have no experience nor data.
How about we just get rid of drug patents altogether…
What would incentivise researching new drugs when all competitors could just copy it, reaping the benefits without cost.
They’re paid by the gov to research already, thats the incentive
All drug development is paid fully by government?
Subsidized generally.
It follows a similar model as military R&D. They request money and have no real obligation to deliver a functioning or viable final product.
And even if it wasnt, a substantial amount IS funded by the gov, enough to have progress made without capitalist vultures reaping exorbitant profits off of the misery of the proletariat
Then they were be no drugs. Nobody is going to spend billions in R&D just so others can make it for nothing. Not how real life works. There is real price gouging haopening, nobody can deny that, but a huge chunk of that happening in the US is thanks to the astronomical amount of money it takes to deal with the FDA to bring a drug to market.
Look at how many of our drugs by US Pharma that sells in other countries for near nothing, people are quick to give credit to that to regulation forcing it, and sometimes it is, but in many cases is countries that allow them to get their drugs on the shelves much quicker and cheaper, and that’s how they get their money back. If a drug is locked up in prescriptions, most can’t get it, they have a hard time making their money back. If they could stick it on a shelf and anybody that wanted them could get them, the money keeps coming in.
A million years ago I used to install auto glass. When a customer had a claim for a windshield, wed charge an insurance conan average of $400 to replace it, when a customer paid us directly without insurance, it was like $250. We were forced to do a ton at bullshit rates because insurance companies work and dictate pricing they’ll pay, so the glass companies pass the loss down the chain. Same way every business works. When stores have constant theft they can’t stop, process go up to couter it.
Or we could just make drug research and development government funded. Problem solved.
Don’t most of these companies use government subsidies anyway?
Yeah, I mean this posts title literally says government funded drugs. We gotta pay for the research with our taxes and then out of pocket for the damn thing.
We gotta pay for the research
You mean that thing you already do?
That’s what I said? And I don’t doubt there’s research going on right now that is funded by the US tax payers.
This would be a perfect slogan. We’re asking that government subsidized medical research be free to the public. We aren’t asking companies to research complex medications without any compensation. Make it so the subsidy results in a net profit for the company (which it probably already does) and remove the private sales. Everyone wins, and we aren’t stupidly paying twice.
That’s a lot of words to say you’re very narrow minded or are drinking too much kool aid.
There’s many ways to solve this that don’t involve us handing exclusivity to mega corporations.
Then they were be no drugs.
Good thing there are no patents on the wheel, huh? I guess we should be lucky any human invented anything for the millenia humans have been doing so before billionaire parasites came around to save us from ourselves, eh?
Does bootlicking come naturally to you or did something happen to make you like this?
Theres no bootlicking you socialist cunt, only seeing how it actually works. In the countries where they don’t make it nearly impossible to bring a drug to market, people can afford them. Not hard to grasp.
you socialist cunt,
Flattery isn’t going to help you here, Clyde.
Your glorious “free market” has been exposed - and no amount of luxury shoe polish you can pack onto your tongue will reverse that.
Read the headline again… this is talking about government-funded patents.
If the pharmaceutical companies are using government funding to pay for their research, the government and the people it represents should reap some of the benefits. Stop being a shill for billion dollar companies that lobby hard in corrupt efforts to get government $s to fund their record profits.
Oh honey. Have you never heard of Jonas Salk? Do you think the pyramids were built for profit? Humans have done things for reasons other than profit. You’ve been brainwashed or are just making ridiculous statements.
Uh, weren’t the pyramids built explicitly for the profit/benefit in the afterlife for those few rulers set to be entombed in them, at the cost of many human lives? I’m having a hard time thinking of something more self centered/personal profit focused right now.
You can certainly take that interpretation, but it had nothing to do with hitting quarterly profit goals. My point is humans create, build and make things and have for millennia before capitalism and profit existed as a motive. The idea that humans wouldn’t do anything if not for the invisible hand of the market is a modern fiction. The idea that we wouldn’t invent life saving drugs without the incentive to make a buck is absurd.
Just because quarterly profit goals are a modern invention doesn’t mean personal interest and self-aggrandizement are. Humans, mostly, created, built, and made things for their own self-interest for millennia. Not saying that’s how it has to be, not saying we should base our civilization on that, but pretending that greed was invented with modern capitalism is silly.
yeah and I provided a range of behaviors from a literal pharaoh to Jonas Salk. What the fuck is up with everyone’s need to jump in with their WELL ACKTUALLY shit
Cool? Dunno how the existence of an altruistic person, or multiple altruistic people, disproves the prevalence of greed in human history. No one said that literally every human to ever exist was exclusively greedy. Talking about trends here.
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This is about as close as you can get to journalistic malpractice. All the stories I see mention a 60 day period for submitting comments, but none of them say how to do it.
Here you can read the notification. Go Here to leave a comment (there’s a comment button under the title). You can leave an anonymous comment if you want, but I only read those for the when I want to feel indignant about the US educational system.
Spread the links. Give them to your friends. Find the administrators of local charities and ask them to comment. Tell your congress-critters that you’re tired of corporations taking tax money to develop technology, then making billions off that technology.
Publicly Funded means Publicly Owned!
Note that it’s the NIST (National Institute of Standards Technology) and not the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) asking for comments. This is the most recent government notice regarding Baye-Dohl (edit, it’s Bayh-Dole). The next-most-recent is Nuclear Regulatory Commision (Dec. 4) and Department of Energy (October). If I see something from FDA I’ll post it.
Commented. Thank you for the link.
I am not sure what will be cheaper, the lobbyist claiming prices aren’t too high, or the shell subsidiary company formed to acquire those third party licenses.
It’s not like you could gobble up all the third party licenses, there are an infinite amount and they would come with a cost.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Dec 7 (Reuters) - The Biden Administration on Thursday announced it is setting new policy that will allow it to seize patents for medicines developed with government funding if it believes their prices are too high.
Under the draft roadmap, seen by Reuters, the government will consider factors including whether only a narrow set of patients can afford the drug, and whether drugmakers are exploiting a health or safety issue by hiking prices.
Megan Van Etten, a spokesperson for the leading pharmaceutical industry lobby group PhRMA, said allowing the government to use march-in rights based on price would stunt innovation and harm patients.
Under Bayh-Dole, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has the power to seize patents of federally-funded medicines, but the agency’s former director Francis Collins said it did not have the authority to use march-in rights to lower drug prices.
Progressive lawmakers in the Democratic Party have this year heaped criticism on drugmakers that developed therapies with government funding, and called on President Joe Biden’s administration to use its march-in authority to lower drug prices.
In March, Moderna (MRNA.O) CEO Stephane Bancel was called to testify in Congress after the company flagged plans to raise the price of its COVID-19 vaccine to as much as $130 per dose, drawing the ire of Democratic U.S.
The original article contains 584 words, the summary contains 216 words. Saved 63%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
WTF is even going on in my country… Like seriously, a half dozen things we’ve been demanding desperately for years are suddenly on the table
Is this a real possibility? Is it a distraction from Israel? Both?
I’m very confused.
