April 06, 2014
It’s hard to believe that patent protection was not mentioned in this useful NYT piece on the high cost of treating chronic diseases like diabetes. The prices of new drugs and devices are high because the government grants companies patent monopolies. It will arrest and imprison potential competitors.
As every intro econ textbook shows, the monopoly profits also provide enormous incentives for corruption. As a result companies routinely misrepresent the safety and effectiveness of their products and lobby politicians to get the government to pay for their products. We would be debating alternative mechanisms for financing drug research if the industry were not so powerful and the economic profession so corrupt.
Addendum:
Sorry folks, I should have been clearer. I meant that the issue of patent-supported research was never raised. There are some folks, like Joe Stiglitz, who is a Nobel prize winning economist, who have suggested alternatives to patent protection as a way to finance research into prescription drugs or medical equipment. So the idea that alternatives exist should not be viewed as crazy-talk. And, if you don’t bring up alternative to patent-supported research in an article like this one — which is a careful and thoughtful piece — where is the issue going to be raised?
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