Between 2012 and 2021, drug companies spent substantially more on stock buybacks and dividends to reward shareholders than they did on research and development.
Do you want your patents nationalized? Because that is how you get your patents nationalized.
Can we just do this anyway?
I don’t totally blame them because money is needed for research. But if pricing control is done across the board, nobody in particular is being targeted. It doesn’t seem anticompetitive if they are all subject to the same rules. Society needs medicine, but it needs to be affordable. Is it really a cure if people can’t afford it?
A single payer system seems the only way to leverage prices to a point where they are available to everyone. There will be bullying by business, but it’s what we need. If they slow walk something, another company can beat them to it. Let them be merciless to themselves.
