[geeks] Drug prices [was Re: nVidia 8800GT for Apple Mac Pro]

[Lionel Peterson]

>From: Micah R Ledbetter <vlack-lists at vlack.com>
>Date: 2008/05/23 Fri PM 03:48:36 EDT
>To: The Geeks List <geeks at sunhelp.org>
>Subject: Re: [geeks] Drug prices [was Re: B nVidia 8800GT for Apple Mac Pro]

>On May 23, 2008, at 13:02, der Mouse wrote:
>
>> One model that strikes me as at
>> least plausible is to nationalize drug research and development, to
>> pay
>> for it with tax dollars and not restrict the results with anything
>> like
>> patents.  The anti-socialism crowd would scream, of course, if such a
>> thing were to be tried in (eg) the USA, but somewhere more heavily
>> socialized might find something of the sort appropriate.  (I don't
>> know
>> whether anyone has tried it; I can't recall hearing of any.)
>
>Interestingly, this is one of the tenets of the Pirate Party:
<http://www2.piratpartiet.se/an_alternative_to_pharmaceutical_patents
> >.
>
>In essence, they argue that since the money is going directly from the
>government to the drug companies in the vast majority of cases (due to
>government-paid healthcare, if I infer correctly) /anyway/, they might
>as well pay those companies directly and abolish patents, to
>everyone's benefit.

Has this model ever been tried been tried before? Was it successful?

I still reel with the real cluster-fsck our federal gov't made of the Flu
Vaccine "crisis" a few years ago - they essentially eliminated all domestic
mfg. of flu vaccine, they called the Pharma companies on the carpet for
causing this problem...

Lionel