The only way to properly do this would then be to have the government become the only R&D and pharma company.

Doable. But I think you put too much faith in the government. The government is a natural monopoly itself. If they're doing a shitty job you don't get any other options.

> Doable. But I think you put too much faith in the government. The government is a natural monopoly itself. If they're doing a shitty job you don't get any other options.

Disagree. A government can be held accountable. Some asshole ex-hedge fund manager attempting to corner the market on a drug can't be.

> A government can be held accountable.

Accountability is not really the main measure we care about (though it's related to it). It's efficiency. We only really care about accountability because its supposed to increase efficiency. People are supposed to get punished when things are running poorly.

The problem is, no one really gets punished when large government organizations are running inefficiently. The business does not go out of business. There is no competition. There is no real incentive to innovate and beat your competitors.

I think we need to reevaluate pharma law. But I don't think replacing the current monopoly with a government one will do much good of anything.

I've long held the belief that whenever there is a supposed failing of private enterprise- it's almost always actually a failing of government. I've yet to be proved wrong. Government makes the barriers of entry too high in the drug market. It's way too easy to have a monopoly because the government basically grants you one.

I am willing to trade some efficiency/cost effectiveness for price and availability stability.

In the longer term you'll get the worst of all worlds. Why not get the best of the short term and long term?

Fix pharma competition.

Why not skip step 1, then? Let the company sell it for however much it wants, and the non profit competes them out of business?

Supply chain stability. Availability is sometimes more important than cost, and if you have a government non-profit producing the drug, you're not wasting any money on the profit that a private company is extracting.

Drugs should be priced based on their cost to produce and whatever R&D needs to be amortized, not by how much value you can extract.

I still don't understand. Why do you need to set prices for private companies if you're competing with them yourself?

Because the free market doesn't work when there's inelastic demand, or when supply chain disruptions cost people their life.

If you think the government making the drug is a viable solution, there's no need to set prices. If you think the government making the drug is not a viable solution, then you shouldn't set prices for fear of the drug being cancelled.

Could you point out the flaw here?

The government (FDA in this case) doesn't make the medication. They just get someone else to make it. They tell company X "You F'ed Up. Give us all your documentation and we will take it to company Y to make."

I'm trying to remember the name of the company that this happened to. It was like 8 years ago and I think I remember them being a cardiac arrest medical. Anyhow, the company CEO flat out refused the FDA regulators demands that they get their manufacturing process up to standards. The FDA went to another manufacturer (I believe Johnson and Johnson) and asked if they would make the medication and they accepted. The FDA then shut down the prior company.

When lives are impacted, the FDA doesn't mess around. They put CEOs in prison for the crappy decisions they make.

There's a big difference between

"not having a manufacturing process up to standards" and "raising the price insurance companies have to pay".