Article • Dean Baker’s Beat the Press
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It seems not. A front page NYT article reported on the drop in profits that the drug industry expects over the next year as many of its blockbuster drugs lose patent protection. The article reports that some of the major pharmaceutical companies may cut back their research spending as a result.
The article never discussed the possibility of alternative funding mechanisms. For example, Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel prize winning economist, has advocated a prize fund whereby the government would buy up patents and allow all drugs to be sold at their competitive market price. It is also possible for the government to simply pay for the research up front (it already finances almost half of biomedical research through the National Institutes of Health). This also would allow the vast majority of new drugs to be sold for a few dollars per prescription.
This sort of overview of the pharmaceutical industry would have been an appropriate place to discuss the merits of the current patent system for financing prescription drug research.