Dec 7 (Reuters) - The Biden Administration on Thursday announced it is setting new policy that will allow it to seize patents for medicines developed with government funding if it believes their prices are too high.
The policy creates a roadmap for the government’s so-called march-in rights, which have never been used before. They would allow the government to grant additional licenses to third parties for products developed using federal funds if the original patent holder does not make them available to the public on reasonable terms.
Under the draft roadmap, seen by Reuters, the government will consider factors including whether only a narrow set of patients can afford the drug, and whether drugmakers are exploiting a health or safety issue by hiking prices.
“We’ll make it clear that when drug companies won’t sell taxpayer funded drugs at reasonable prices, we will be prepared to allow other companies to provide those drugs for less,” White House adviser Lael Brainard said on a press call.
Wow. That’s good.
But I’m willing to bet lobbyists are going to decide what is deemed “too high”.
Lawyers and judges will decide. Any attempt to trigger this mechanism will set off a legal firestorm the likes of which has seldom been seen. And once it reaches the Supreme Court…
Is a final law or a policy that can be thrown out by president? Didn’t Obama pass many environments policies that were thrown out by Trump?
how about m4a like every other proper country
yeah but shareholders
Here’s a wild idea: make every citizen a shareholder in the country.
Imagine having voting rights at the board meeting
You are shareholder of the countries debt. Is that not enough for you?
That’s doesn’t make fat stacks of cash.
you mean like gasp socialism?
Technically no other country has M4A. All of them have supplemental private insurance, and the current M4A policy completely abolishes all of it.
I’m in favor of universal healthcare for essentials and allowing private insurance for supplementals, to start with. The ultimate goal would be to phase out insurance completely, but it’s unwise to jump ahead to it immediately since there currently aren’t any systems that do so and we have no experience nor data.
How about we just get rid of drug patents altogether…
What would incentivise researching new drugs when all competitors could just copy it, reaping the benefits without cost.
They’re paid by the gov to research already, thats the incentive
All drug development is paid fully by government?
Subsidized generally.
It follows a similar model as military R&D. They request money and have no real obligation to deliver a functioning or viable final product.
And even if it wasnt, a substantial amount IS funded by the gov, enough to have progress made without capitalist vultures reaping exorbitant profits off of the misery of the proletariat
This is about as close as you can get to journalistic malpractice. All the stories I see mention a 60 day period for submitting comments, but none of them say how to do it.
Here you can read the notification. Go Here to leave a comment (there’s a comment button under the title). You can leave an anonymous comment if you want, but I only read those for the when I want to feel indignant about the US educational system.
Spread the links. Give them to your friends. Find the administrators of local charities and ask them to comment. Tell your congress-critters that you’re tired of corporations taking tax money to develop technology, then making billions off that technology.
Publicly Funded means Publicly Owned!
Note that it’s the NIST (National Institute of Standards Technology) and not the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) asking for comments. This is the most recent government notice regarding Baye-Dohl (edit, it’s Bayh-Dole). The next-most-recent is Nuclear Regulatory Commision (Dec. 4) and Department of Energy (October). If I see something from FDA I’ll post it.
Commented. Thank you for the link.
I am not sure what will be cheaper, the lobbyist claiming prices aren’t too high, or the shell subsidiary company formed to acquire those third party licenses.
It’s not like you could gobble up all the third party licenses, there are an infinite amount and they would come with a cost.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Dec 7 (Reuters) - The Biden Administration on Thursday announced it is setting new policy that will allow it to seize patents for medicines developed with government funding if it believes their prices are too high.
Under the draft roadmap, seen by Reuters, the government will consider factors including whether only a narrow set of patients can afford the drug, and whether drugmakers are exploiting a health or safety issue by hiking prices.
Megan Van Etten, a spokesperson for the leading pharmaceutical industry lobby group PhRMA, said allowing the government to use march-in rights based on price would stunt innovation and harm patients.
Under Bayh-Dole, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has the power to seize patents of federally-funded medicines, but the agency’s former director Francis Collins said it did not have the authority to use march-in rights to lower drug prices.
Progressive lawmakers in the Democratic Party have this year heaped criticism on drugmakers that developed therapies with government funding, and called on President Joe Biden’s administration to use its march-in authority to lower drug prices.
In March, Moderna (MRNA.O) CEO Stephane Bancel was called to testify in Congress after the company flagged plans to raise the price of its COVID-19 vaccine to as much as $130 per dose, drawing the ire of Democratic U.S.
The original article contains 584 words, the summary contains 216 words. Saved 63%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
WTF is even going on in my country… Like seriously, a half dozen things we’ve been demanding desperately for years are suddenly on the table
Is this a real possibility? Is it a distraction from Israel? Both?
I’m very confused.
