This would be fine, so long as we made drugs go generic much faster. Which would require more public funding for drug research. Which would turn the system on its head.
The FDA allowing the purchase of generics from reputable manufacturers in India and China, regardless of patent law, would also decimate the current system.
Please list all of the drugs that have been developed by government and non-profits. And by developed, I mean actually brought to market. The list will be very short.
Yes, the NIH funds basic scientific research. The NIH does not create new drugs. Even if an NIH research had discovered a new drug (they usually don't, they discover new science that leads to new drugs), that's about 5% of what it actually takes to get a drug to market.
If you look R&D spending by pharma companies, the research part costs about 1/3rd. The development part is 2/3rds of the cost.
Take a look at the Nature article that traced who discovered new drugs over the past decade or so. Over 2/3 were NOT invented by gov't or non-profit funding.
> If you look R&D spending by pharma companies, the research part costs about 1/3rd. The development part is 2/3rds of the cost.
You left off the marketing expense:
"In 2012, the pharmaceutical industry spent more than $27 billion on drug promotion— more than $24 billion on marketing to physicians and over $3 billion on advertising to consumers (mainly through television commercials)."
> Take a look at the Nature article that traced who discovered new drugs over the past decade or so. Over 2/3 were NOT invented by gov't or non-profit funding.
But that doesn't mean government can't invent or fund drug discovery.
It seems like we're on a different topic now. My original point was private companies do most of the drug discovery now with gov't funds helping out. The marketing expense doesn't change that.
As for the marketing expense, selling drugs is a high touch business. You can't just run ads, you need sales people to go and visit doctors, answer their questions, provide educational materials. That costs a lot of money. The $24B in marketing to physicians is likely mostly the salary of sales reps.
And before you say that it's not needed, I've spoken to a number of doctors that have a good relationship with sales reps and find them helpful. They don't have time to keep up on every new piece of data on a drug.
If you're drug is crap, you won't be able to sell it, period. A great example is Pfizer's inhaled insulin, Exubera. It barely sold $20M at peak. You'd think a company like Pfizer who are marketing geniuses could move anything, but they couldn't move Exubera because it was a crap drug.
