Pandemic aside, the US government shouldn’t get a better deal than any other investor. If you invest “tens of millions” into drugs that will cost “billions” to bring to market, you don’t get to get the drug for free. Imagine a Silicon Valley investor proposing those terms: we’ll invest $1 million in your startup for 75% of the equity. But that’s exactly what people are proposing when they say a few tens of millions of government funding should buy free access to patented technology that takes hundreds of millions to bring to market.

I don’t think people are asking for “free”, they’re asking for “at cost”, or some sort of bulk deal. There is actually a lot of precedent for that in SV deals, for one people get some return on investment (the bulk order discount / profit cut deal). Second you get deal modifiers like facebooks sweetheart ad deal for Microsoft’s 240M funding round, which might be akin to “if we fund this thing we need you to work with us if we’re all about to die without it”.

Truly good/fair solution probably exists between nationalizing Gilead and Gileads opening bid.

At cost is highly problematic when your investor is also your largest consumer by a huge margin.

Also, if you donate no-strings grants and services, you are not a investor in the traditional sense. You are providing charity.

Based on your link, various American government agencies contributed $70MM to the R&D of remdesivir. While I can't find the total R&D cost for this particular drug, the average R&D cost for bringing a new drug to market is about $1BN [1]. Draw your own conclusions.

[1] https://www.biopharmadive.com/news/new-drug-cost-research-de...

It's disingenious to frame like the public paid for the whole research. This articles talks about 70 million dollars in public money invested. Bringing a drug to market has a total R&D bill on the order of billions of dollars.

the US government intentionally gives away money with no strings attached for R&D. The explicit purpose of this funding is to help companies make products and profit. If the outcome you want is different, we need to look at different research vehicles.

This section of your WaPo article hits the nail on the head:

>“Without incentivizing some of these companies to stay attached to emerging disease, I think they will walk away, even after this one,” he said. “In this situation [filing for a government patent] would have caused more harm with Gilead and not been worth it. “The government’s job is to make sure industry is successful, and if industry is successful, then we all benefit from it.” “Although USAMRIID performed extensive and critical screening and testing for Gilead, testing a compound and finding that it is indeed an effective antiviral compound does not qualify USAMRIID as a joint inventor of the compound,” Leigh Callander, chief patent counsel for the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command, said in an email.