Dec 7 (Reuters) - The Biden Administration on Thursday announced it is setting new policy that will allow it to seize patents for medicines developed with government funding if it believes their prices are too high.
The policy creates a roadmap for the government’s so-called march-in rights, which have never been used before. They would allow the government to grant additional licenses to third parties for products developed using federal funds if the original patent holder does not make them available to the public on reasonable terms.
Under the draft roadmap, seen by Reuters, the government will consider factors including whether only a narrow set of patients can afford the drug, and whether drugmakers are exploiting a health or safety issue by hiking prices.
“We’ll make it clear that 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 adviser Lael Brainard said on a press call.
Uh, weren’t the pyramids built explicitly for the profit/benefit in the afterlife for those few rulers set to be entombed in them, at the cost of many human lives? I’m having a hard time thinking of something more self centered/personal profit focused right now.
You can certainly take that interpretation, but it had nothing to do with hitting quarterly profit goals. My point is humans create, build and make things and have for millennia before capitalism and profit existed as a motive. The idea that humans wouldn’t do anything if not for the invisible hand of the market is a modern fiction. The idea that we wouldn’t invent life saving drugs without the incentive to make a buck is absurd.
Just because quarterly profit goals are a modern invention doesn’t mean personal interest and self-aggrandizement are. Humans, mostly, created, built, and made things for their own self-interest for millennia. Not saying that’s how it has to be, not saying we should base our civilization on that, but pretending that greed was invented with modern capitalism is silly.
yeah and I provided a range of behaviors from a literal pharaoh to Jonas Salk. What the fuck is up with everyone’s need to jump in with their WELL ACKTUALLY shit
Cool? Dunno how the existence of an altruistic person, or multiple altruistic people, disproves the prevalence of greed in human history. No one said that literally every human to ever exist was exclusively greedy. Talking about trends here.
Cool, great discussion. Glad we had it.