If Taxpayers Pay For Development of a Drug, Should They Have a Say in Determining the Drug Price?

Pinochet

[Asclepius]

But if American taxpayer money was used in R & D, then the taxpayer should have a say on the pricing of the drugs, that were developed with money taken from our paychecks.

Then drug manufacturers should be indemnified at public expense against all liability. Or should simply be immune from lawsuits.

But your argument even on its face is based on an odd assumption. You seem to believe that drug companies set prices. They do not. Markets do. They charge what the market will bear relative to their own costs and liabilities.

[sirshackleton]

I'd rather help finance drug companies by buying their stock issues.

[AdamSelene235]

But if American taxpayer money was used in R & D, then the taxpayer should have a say on the pricing of the drugs,

I thinking your missing the genius of American Socialism. American Socialism does not nationalize the *means* of production, it nationalizes the *results*. This kind of Socialism retains two critical elements of free market capitalism. First it retains the incentives of a capitalist system and second it retains the market pricing mechanism. The market mechanism is then used as a tool for central planning. So, no, government price fixing of drugs is horrible, horrible idea. It would only get the Feds even further divorced from reality.

[FairWitness]

While the profit-to-revenue ratio for the pharmaceutical industry is relatively high (approx. 19% according to Congressman Bernie Sanders, Socialist from Vermont), consider what that implies: If all profit were taken out of pharmaceuticals, they would be only about 19% cheaper on the average! If drugs only cost 81% of what they do now, would folks who consider current prices "exorbitant" suddenly consider them reasonable? Let's destroy the most successful industry America has and find out.

[ItsMyVoteDammit]

This is a moot point.

The Medicare Prescription Drug bill has a non-negotiation clause for prescription drug pricing. No one is allowed to negotiate the price. They name their price, taxpayers pay the bill. End of story.

[AdamSelene235]

Let's destroy the most successful industry America has and find out.

Oh just give them a little time.

[headsonpikes]

Ssshhhh!!

You'll give the game away!

Where's your gubmint job then, eh?

[AdamSelene235]

Ssshhhh!! You'll give the game away! Where's your gubmint job then, eh?

Why would I want a government job? I'd much rather have private employment that uses public funds to take private risks.

Duhhh!

[cksharks]

He's full of horse manure and sounds like he has been smoking some. The larget group to get protection are the farmers bar none.They are protected from everything.

[Pharmboy]

This is from the pharmaceutical industry's trade association web site. It should shed some light on this discussion. The NIH gets paid back in license fees for their discoveries.

Please note: the drug industry ITSELF developed > 90% of the AIDS drugs.

I am a physician in the drug industry.

How Government And The Rx Industry Cooperate For Benefit Of Patients
As intended by Congress, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) works with the research-based pharmaceutical industry to promote the development of new medicines.

The NIH helps to spur pharmaceutical innovation through the basic biomedical research it funds and undertakes, some of which is transferred to drug companies through Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADAs). These agreements are encouraged by the 1980 Bayh-Dole Act and the Federal Technology Transfer Act of 1986, which were designed to promote national technological competitiveness through the rapid transfer of basic research to the private sector.

NIH’s focus is on early research activities such as the screening of compounds and other basic drug-discovery activities. Normally it is not the role – or even within the capability – of the government to develop a compound that results from NIH research into a marketable product. The myriad of development activities, including clinical trials, are typically performed by a corporate partner.

For example, NIH had spent 30 years and $32 million on one compound that had been studied in fewer than 500 patients at the time it entered into a CRADA with a research-based pharmaceutical company in early 1991. In less than two years, the company had resolved supply, purity, and production problems; obtained initial FDA marketing clearance, and begun producing and distributing enough of the drug for all of the patients who needed it. The company has spent more than $1 billion in conducting clinical trials and developing the drug, which has become a leading cancer treatment.

Under NIH policy, the government is usually compensated for its early research of a CRADA product by a negotiated royalty, the amount of which is dependent on a number of factors including the degree of risk assumed by the corporate sponsor. In April 1995, Dr. Harold Varmus, Director of the NIH, in announcing the results of a year-long review of CRADA activities, found that the agreements represented a small part of NIH’s intramural research activities. Nevertheless, he said they significantly advanced biomedical research by allowing the exchange and use of experimental compounds, proprietary research materials, reagents, scientific advice, and private financial resources between government and industry scientists. The NIH announcement continued:

“NIH also determined that very few CRADAs have directly resulted thus far in new intellectual property or products. The six products developed under NIH CRADAs since 1987 either are non-exclusively licensed to one or more companies or had no patent protection and did not require licensure for development. Thus, to date, no CRADA product has been developed under an exclusive license, although several CRADA technologies have been exclusively licensed and may result in future products. The vast majority of CRADAs result in new scientific knowledge, not new products.”

The research-based pharmaceutical industry continues to spend more on biomedical R&D than NIH and discovers and develops the vast majority of the medicines in the U.S. In 2001 alone, PhRMA member companies spent about 70 percent more on biomedical R&D than the entire budget for the NIH – $30.3 billion in private R&D spending compared to about $20.3 billion for the entire operating budget of the NIH.*

In a report issued to Congress in July of 2001, the NIH thoroughly disproved the contention that the government pays for most of the research for top-selling prescription drugs. The report found that only 4 of 47 drugs with U.S. sales of $500 million a year had been developed in part with technologies created with NIH funding.

As an example of the vital role the industry plays in drug development, look at a review of 56 drugs that were approved to treat AIDS and AIDS-related conditions. Of the 56 drugs, 51 (91 percent) were discovered and developed by the pharmaceutical industry, while NIH holds the patent rights and played a major role in the discovery of the other 5 drugs, according to NIH’s Office of Technology Transfer.

Each party, NIH and the industry, plays a vital and complementary role in biomedical innovation. NIH leads the way in basic biomedical research and contributes to applied research, while industry leads the way in drug discovery and development and is conducting an increasing amount of basic research – to the ultimate benefit of patients all around the world.

[headsonpikes]

You're a top-of-the-foodchain kind of guy!

Socialism = Cannibalism

Social Democracy = Cannibalism + Robert's Rules of Order

Corporatism = Cannibalism + Lawyers

[AdamSelene235]

Please note: the drug industry ITSELF developed > 90% of the AIDS drugs.

Yeah, AZT was a Big help.