By the way pharmaceutical companies also free ride on public universities. Research is often done there. Even if it is from grants, it often means professors end up working and spending their time for pharma companies instead of doing other things like teaching students.

Moreover, if our goal is to win hearts and minds and I don't know, promote Democracy (at least that is what the propaganda tells us), isn't providing health saving medication or building hospitals or schools working towards that goal better than say overthrowing their government or threatening to invade.

Going back to Western Europe, I hear it is already possibly to go to Germany (or was it Norway) and attend a 4 year university there for free. Isn't that free riding So they can have our pills and we can go there and not pay $200k in student loans. Globalization and free markets, we learned that was a good thing, right ...

It's time to reign in patent protections, specifically regarding extension patents, and bring in compulsory license maximums for prescription medicines. Give drug companies 5 years exclusivity once they react market... after that they can only charge X per day for licensing... imho that should probably be $10/day/prescription, and drop every year.

Patent protections, in this case, and many others actually exceed the value they provide to larger society, so I'm in favor of limiting them in this case as opposed to removing them entirely. I understand there are a great amount of expense, but that is usually recouped within 3-5 years, and often in medication less than that.

Earlier competition will lead to better pricing structures that are less restrictive over marginalized costs. In effect benefitting consumers.

The key point in the constitution behind copyright and patents are "limited" exclusivity... those limits don't always have to be larger... sometimes they need to be smaller, and some industries aren't the same as others.

Free ride? You think pharmaceutical companies just come along and pluck the best drugs for free? No, they out-license it from the university and pay royalties.

How else would Northwestern University build a brand new chemistry building from their Lyrica royalties?

So nice for them to be able to pick and choose the successful research while not having to absorb all the other, less interesting research funded with public money.

Complaining that drug companies are free-riding on public research is like complaining that the local 7-11 is free-riding on the public safety provided by police officers.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/02/11/big-p...

[2] http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2015/07/06/serious-risks-and-f...

First off, no, marketing is not where most of the money is spent. Second, marketing spend has a positive ROI, so they get more money back than they spent.

Lastly, this entire discussion is about a wonder drug that cures a terrible disease and you claim most new drugs are minor tweaks.

Or are you claiming that Europe isn't meaningfully free-riding simply because new drug development just isn't valuable, and we'd be better off with much less drug research? I think that's a defensible claim, but it's very contentious and should be stated clearly if you believe it.