While I can't speak as much to the case in article, my problem is due to IP restrictions. Though companies buying the rights to daranide sounds an awful lot like IP too.

It's similar to IP, but it isn't IP, it's a grant of exclusivity from the FDA. They publish the info:

https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cder/ob/patent_info.c...

I wonder if they could tie the exclusivity period to net revenues or something.

How would you propose recouping the cost of developing a New Chemical Entity into an approved drug without the exclusivity provided by IP?

I don't know all of the ins-and-outs of funding, but this[0] study says that there are other countries developing NMEs at a proportionately faster rate than the US.

From the discussion section:

>Pharmaceutical innovation is an international enterprise. Although the United States is an important contributor to pharmaceutical innovation, we found that more than 20 countries contributed to the development of the 288 NMEs with patents at the time of approval. More than 171 companies were involved in the development of these NMEs, and the vast majority of companies were multinationals with facilities located in more than 2 countries. We also found that the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Belgium, and a few other countries innovated proportionally more than their contribution to the global GDP or prescription drug spending, whereas Japan, Spain, Australia, and Italy innovated less.

Granted I know that GDP isn't the end-all be-all for determining how drugs can be financed, but I think there is something to learn from the study and how other countries do business while continuing to innovate.

[0]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2866602/

If you look up the budget numbers for how these pharma companies operate, very little money goes into R&D as a fraction of revenue. The supposedly high cost of bringing a drug to market is a talking point used to justify high prices, not something that is necessarily based in reality. They are absolutely not barely breaking even.

Much of large pharma R&D effectively happens through asset acquisition of smaller entities, and I don’t think that is reflected well by budget numbers.

Tufts numbers are generally regarded as high. Booth at Atlas puts the cost ranging from $300M for a drug that can be developed on a lean process (like Eli’s Chorus) to $1.6B for something developed by large pharma. Regardless of where in the range you are, it’s risky and it isn’t cheap.

Which brings me to my original question: if not assisted by the exclusivity provided by IP, how should drug development costs be paid for? And beyond that, how should lifecycle costs be paid for?

Finance it out of taxes. This isn't a new chemical entity, it's an old chemical entity certified for a new purpose. The costs seem high to an individual but by corporate standards a few million is peanuts.

Financing out of taxes is a guarantee it will be a lot more expensive. Suddenly a company has all the motivation to build a multi-billion drug that tends to 10 patients, as long as the state picks up the bill.

Hello? We're talking about a drug that already exists. I'm fine with the manufacture-only part of it being done by a publicly owned entity.

Parent is speaking of a different drug than the article, and it sounds like they are speaking of a new drug.

tbh I think parent is trying to change the subject away from the topic of the article.

Perhaps so. It’s difficult to discuss anything adjacent to healthcare when it intersects with our lives in such a personal way. It’s really challenging to bridge the knowledge and experience gap as well. Insiders are the first to declare the system we have now as flawed, but it’s a very complicated machine to change. We are trying!

edit, to speak to the complexity. Up until yesterday, if you asked me if the industry should cease direct to consumer marketing, I’d say “hell yes, I’ll push the big red button myself”. Yesterday however, while watching late night TV (which I rarely do), I happened to pay attention to an ad (which I rarely do) for a biologic that could really help out a friend with a miserable chronic condition. Don’t know if it will work or not until they try, but they are exactly the right population for the treatment. None of their physicians suggested it, I didn’t think of it despite being vaguely familiar with this area of medicine, but the DTC ad was an inspiration. I still think on the balance that DTC marketing is bad, but this personal experience makes me question if the possibility of occasional successes overrides. I have no idea, but I spend a lot of time nursing my beer in the corner the pub trying to figure things out.