Well, and now they're going to spend a lot of computer time finding parallel constructions for the same molecule they want to patent, so they can patent those as well.
There are some differences between a company charging $270,000/year for a medication you need to survive [1] and a company trying to sell you on 'Uber for dry cleaning,' or whatever.
But wait, these drugs won't even exist if they didn't charge as much. They are needed by very few people (so if the price was $1000 they won't boost the number of patients so much, as the diseases are very rare), and drug research and regulatory process of approval is very expensive.
I'm not convinced drug research is expensive. I've met grad students. I've seen how much they do and how much they get paid.
That leaves the regulatory process, and if the problem is government intervention in the free market with overtones of regulatory capture (drug regulation being too excessive), the solution is certainly not more government intervention in the free market with overtones of regulatory capture (patents).
Not sure I understand - are you agreeing or disagreeing with me? The podcast describes how a well-intended government intervention in the free market and how it led to rampant price gouging.
I would be more than thrilled if we got rid of the free market entirely. But that seems unrealistic, and if we're going to have it, the government needs to be very much on guard against saying "We can fix these market inefficiencies by letting these people make more profit." I maintain that if the government had instead caused pharmaceutical companies to make less profit from their regular drugs, orphan drugs wouldn't have looked so unappealing in comparison.
> I would be more than thrilled if we got rid of the free market entirely.
It is a market controlled by various lobbies focused on increased the shareholder value. How is it a free Market? In a free market, there shouldn't be monopolies.
Goverments first sitting idle and allowing the companies to grow like cancer and then rushing in to save them when they crash in the name of saving the economy is anything but free market.
Fine, I'll rephrase that as "I would be more than thrilled if we got rid of the allegedly-free market entirely." Let's admit that truly free markets are an unstable equilibrium and that government regulation can actually do some good, and let's stop being afraid of government-run markets.
> But wait, these drugs won't even exist if they didn't charge as much.
Why they should not charge fairly? How much is as much?
On the issue of innovation, profit seekers does not have enough courage to do this. Board of big companies live quarter to quarter because their compensation is directy linked to stock value. It doesn't matter how much money they already have. Here is quote from the ted talk[1] linked below.
> In the drug industry, for example, 75% of the “radically innovative drugs” in the United States are researched in nationally funded laboratories. Whereas drug companies focus their efforts on “me-too” drugs — varieties of proven, profitable drugs — governments will take on potentially game-changing “new molecular priorities,” despite the risks involved.
Sure, but startups also tend not to patent their work. When one startup dies, another can make another attempt at the same thing.
(I'm not saying patents in the tech industry don't happen ever - at the last startup I worked for, I got three patents - just that they don't meaningfully limit the ability of other people to replicate the work or compete directly, the way pharma patents seem to.)
