If you develop drugs using tax payer money, then that has to be paid back in some way. Either as a percentage of profits (based on percentage invested), paying back the investment (with interest) or an agreement on a cheaper price. Or something else.
Pharma has had it’s cake and eating it for far too long.
Nothing that is being suggested is unreasonable here.
white house threatening that it might actually protect its citizens from corporations
They are threatening to fix a problem no other civilised country has? How about actually fixing it? Right, that would be “doing something”, kryptonite of every american politician.
“checks and balances” theoretically protects us from tyranny.
Also allows cronies to protect their own interests by blocking any proposed changes.
Yes and no. Yes, normally you do have a series of institutions overseeing different parts of the government and making sure it acts within the laws but in USA this system is simply broken. In normal countries constitution is the ultimate guarantee and the judiciary 'check’s if laws are in accordance with it. The judiciary functions as a independent branch with judges being selected by other judges to the most important roles. In USA supreme court judges are directly selected by the president which totally invalidates the entire system. At the same time, in every other country, it’s assumed that party with the majority in the parliament simply has the mandate to govern and (surprise) does govern. They use this majority to do reforms and pass laws. In USA not only the system is designed in a way that does not let the party with majority support actually control the government (electoral college, the senate, election cycle), they also came up with fictional mechanisms to further weaken the ruling party (filibuster). As a result the ‘checks and balances’ make sure that no true reforms are possible while weakening the judicial oversight and constitutional rights. Worst system you could think of.
“The White House is threatening”
That line is so telling. The media arm of corporate America spinning hard. Like a child getting told no and telling everyone that getting refused a third PS5 is abusive.
But for real, if I can point to any other developed country in the world and they’re paying way less for the same thing sold in the US, then it shouldn’t be that high in the US either. I get making a profit off your research, but especially when taxpayers helped fund said research, there should be no reason we’re essentially subsidizing the cost of the drug in the rest of the world.
Yeah I think the first reaction to this was too hot. The government probably doesn’t want to seize patents and this is really meant as a warning to get pharma to keep drug prices down more reasonable prices.
That is, generally, how the Federal government prefers to work. They’d rather extract compliance from than execute action against businesses.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration is putting pharmaceutical companies on notice, warning them that if the price of certain drugs is too high, the government might cancel their patent protection and allow rivals to make their own versions.
Under a plan announced Thursday, the government would consider overriding the patent for high-priced drugs that have been developed with the help of taxpayer money and letting competitors make them in hopes of driving down the cost.
With health care costs in mind, the administration also sent a warning Thursday to private equity firms that have been buying up and gutting hospitals and physician practices around the country, then selling for a profit.
While only a minority of drugs on the market relied so heavily on taxpayer dollars, the threat of a government “march-in” on patents will make many pharmaceutical companies think twice, said Jing Luo, a professor of medicine at University of Pittsburgh.
The pharmaceutical lobby immediately pushed back on Biden’s announcement, arguing the White House’s interpretation of the law is inaccurate and their plan will stifle drug research and development.
“This would be yet another loss for American patients who rely on public-private sector collaboration to advance new treatments and cures,” said Megan Van Etten, a spokesperson for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, or PhRMA.
The original article contains 757 words, the summary contains 218 words. Saved 71%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
About time…
Sounds like a toothless threat, following through would upset too many campaign donors.
It’s not toothless. There is an existing law that allows the government to issue their own licenses for drugs still under patent developed using at least some amount of tax payer money under certain circumstances. It’s pretty broadly worded in the law when this can be done, so previously regulations were made to define the circumstances more precisely. The administration is issuing a new regulation that says one of those circumstances will now include if the drug is high priced limiting its access. Because new regulations issued by the executive branch have a mandatory public comment period after they are proposed before they take effect, its not active quite yet but will be soon (that’s why every headline about this is using the dumb vague word of threaten). The drug companies are already promising to sue to try and overturn the new regulation. So yeah it’s got teeth.
Thank you, I came to this comment section hoping someone would explain what exactly the basis in law was for this.
This is the specific law Biden is trying to derive the authority from if you’re interested in more:
