Process
Status Items Output None Questions None Claims None Highlights Done See section below
Highlights
id597815463
the biggest pharmaceutical companies aren’t really drug development companies at all: they’re marketing, lobbying, and litigation firms with patent portfolios.
✏️ Top three pharmas spent last year:
- 39.6 billion on R&D.
- 35.7 billion on dividends/share buybacks
- 40.1 billion on acquisitions
- Unknown amount on marketing 🔗 View Highlight
id597815575
Fully two-thirds of new drugs now come from these small companies
✏️ Public sources like NIH fund the basic research, then these small companies are the ones actually making the new drugs. Only then, when drugs are finally made, does big pharma show up… usually by buying up the smaller companies. 🔗 View Highlight
id810605010
Instead of patent monopolies and Medicare subsidies, the government could simply contract with the same small firms that Big Pharma currently targets for buyouts, and cut out the middleman — paying them to develop drugs. The military-industrial complex has hardly been hampered in its ability to develop life-destroying innovations through a similar procurement process; why would lifesaving innovations be any different?
id810605140
market incentives driving drug development may do more harm than good in health care industries, because market prices drastically underprice social benefits.
✏️ Replace “drug development” with anything really. When driven by market incentives, you will always want repeat business rather than a one-time thing. Why cure a disease when you can treat its symptoms indefinitely, making money all the way? #followup as a core argument against market incentives / free market 🔗 View Highlight
id810605908
when we needed a vaccine, and fast, to fight the COVID-19 outbreak, we used an entirely different model, based on direct financing.
✏️ Another thing that the pandemic taught us.. when push comes to shove, socialist processes work better. 🔗 View Highlight