Intellectual Property Is Broken [Dean Baker]

Why are we incentivizing wealth at the expense of health?

Produced by Matthew Kulvicki & Nick Alpha

[JLJones-sfgt]

Therein lies the problem. We do have publicly funded research. Very little to no development occurs at big pharma without public funding for "research".

[bgiv]

Why can't the government directly fund research like it does for the military and other unprofitable functions? This is obviously not something the free market should handle from the start.

[kassistwisted]

I'm an American living in the Netherlands. I have worked both for a publically-funded cardiac research facility and the pharmaceutical companies that developed cardiac drugs discovered by NIH-funded research facilities. The pharma companies are exploiting publically-funded research, and that must stop. In the Netherlands, in 2019 our health ministry didn't like the high prices our pharmaceutical companies were charging for drugs, so the government told them to reduce their prices or else we would buy from other countries. Guess what: they dropped their prices! All is needed to solve the problem in the pharmaceutical arena is government oversight. No pharma company operates without government licensing. They US government already regulates the industry. But there is no political will to control drug prices. It's possible and it's even easy if the political will is there. But pharmaceutical companies own Congressmembers, so it will not happen in America until the corruption laws are enforced.

[cheri]

This is exactly what should happen. I KNOW ELDERLY PEOPLE RIGHT NOW THAT DOES NOT HAVE HEALTHCARE COVERAGE AND PRESCRIPTIONS. these are good ideas. Thank you . PUBLICLY FUNDED RESEARCH. ❤️

[Earwaxfire]

There might be a Goldilocks zone of patent laws. Without patents no major company is going to do science. And public funding almost exclusively goes to insiders. A lot of my own research ideas were waved off when I proposed them then stolen a few years later by people who denied my funding. Some framework that would incentivize science but limit exploitation and at the same time protect new research ideas would be helpful. But my own experience is that our system is far to corrupt. Most small private companies keep trade secretes and only patent to sell the companies based upon those ideas. It's a mess.

[GaneshGunaji]

Our patent system is the source to a LOT of the inequality we see in our economy. The scope of our patents are too broad and last too long.

[schumanhuman]

More public research is good, harberger taxes is another route to improving the system.

[falsificationism]

I like how we implicitly assume no one wants to cure cancer unless they can make money off it. What a sick system.

[craigwilson]

Imagine if the U.S. had publicly funded health care, publicly funded education and college, publicly funded infrastructure renewal and transportation, publicly funded elections, publicly funded main stream media, publicly funded day care centers and clinics along with a publicly funded legal system that allowed everyone legal representation in the eyes of the law . . . democracy would flourish, unionization would rise along with Americas current deplorable wages and the government as intended in the constitution would once again serve the interests of the peoole not the interests of wall street and the neoliberal policies that have given rise, based on privatization and tax exemption on corporate profits and buy back stock investments to an entrenched unelected oligarchy.

[matildamcgillicuddy]

Bravo! I'm glad to see this, and I'd be even gladder if we could see it happen. I would add that we could dispense with the proliferation of laws that we are forced to enact to control some corporations' behavior as they work to maximize profits.
It would be so much more efficient!

[malikrabnawazawan]

No payment done to the
F F. By government

[Bo-rtsg]

What a great utopian idea! There are any number of examples of miserable failure of public funded research in communist countries. Until they turned into practically dictatorship countries, like China and Russia. It is unfortunate that fruits of advanced research could be denied to the poor class for a while but is there any other proven system in the world that truly helps the poor in the long run?