this post was submitted on 07 Dec 2023
803 points (99.3% liked)

News

23367 readers
2717 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

The Biden administration on Thursday asserted its authority to seize the patents of certain costly medications in a new push to slash high drug prices and promote more pharmaceutical competition.

The administration unveiled a framework outlining the factors federal agencies should consider in deciding whether to use a controversial policy, known as march-in rights, to break the patents of drugs that were developed with federal funds but are not widely accessible to the public. For the first time, officials can now factor in a medication’s price — a change that could have big implications for drugmakers depending on how the government uses the powers.

“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 National Economic Advisor Lael Brainard said during a call with reporters Wednesday.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works 13 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

taxpayers have spent tens of billions of dollars to fund hundreds of drugs

That's actually not that much per drug - approximately 100 million, when the average drug costs over a billion to bring to market. I think the drug companies may have a point when they say

“The Administration is sending us back to a time when government research sat on a shelf, not benefitting anyone.”

On the other hand

The drugmakers charge more than $150,000 a year for Xtandi in the U.S. before insurance and other rebates, but charge a fraction of that price in other developed countries.

I don't think it's fair for Americans to subsidize the healthcare of equally wealthy people in other countries. There's a possible win-win situation in which the US government helps protect the interests of American drug companies abroad in exchange for lower domestic prices.

This is an interesting article.

[–] Overzeetop@kbin.social 16 points 11 months ago (1 children)

protect the interests of American drug companies abroad

That's a nice sentiment, but the drug companies are voluntarily selling internationally at lower prices. There's no "protecting the interests" drone strike we can make when the big pharma is doing the rate setting itself (negotiating, true, but still a voluntary choice). The proper fix would be to mandate that any drug that had any Federal research may not be sold in the US for more than in any other part of the world and that fee may not exceed (make up a number) 10x the production cost, with distribution not allowed to exceed 50% of the cost of the retail price of the medication and delivery not to exceed 125% of commercial shipping rates.

[–] ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

The USA can do quite a lot via trade deals, but what you're suggesting actually goes a lot further than what I had in mind to force other countries to pay more for drugs rather than simply reaping the benefits of American spending. Since the majority of drug profits come from the USA, drug companies would drop low-paying foreign markets rather than reduce American prices. This would simply lock out poor countries that can't pay more than they do (maybe you would make an exception for them) but as long as the USA also enforced treaties protecting American patents, wealthy Europeans would have little choice except to pay their fair share.

(I think actually doing all that would be a major international-relations blowup, with a lot of retaliation by countries exporting to the USA. I'm also not sure it would be legal in the context of existing treaties. But it would get the job done...)

[–] Uncle_Bagel@midwest.social 3 points 11 months ago

Other countries dont need to pay more for drugs. Pharma companies are taking advantage of Americans, having tax dollars fund research and then chsrging exorbitant prices to those same taxpayers.