The unholy alliance between Big Pharma and the FDA and Federal Government is truly breathtaking to behold. Unfortunately, its nature is so arcane and obscure that only a few notice this, other than those who benefit from it and keep their lips shut. To unpack this we must explore a few separate but interrelated issues.
In a more recent paper, economists Michele Boldrin and David Levine conclude that "The case against patents can be summarized briefly: there is no empirical evidence that they serve to increase innovation and productivitythere is strong evidence, instead, that patents have many negative consequences." Other studies in fact indicate that the patent system imposes annually hundreds of billions of dollars of costs on the US economy alone, or more, from the lost and distorted innovation, higher prices resulting from reduced competition and huge payments made to attorneys in lawsuits and so on.
As Burke said, "The Thing! The Thing itself is the Abuse!" It is not that the patent system used to work and now has been broken; it is not that the real problem is "Abuse" of the system, or incompetent patent examiners, and that we only need to "Tweak" things to "Get back to" some halcyon golden age where patents really worked and really were compatible with liberty and property rights and the free market.
Now let's turn to Big Pharma and pharmaceutical patents.
The case against pharmaceutical patents is even stronger than the case against other types of patents.
We now have a system of healthcare, innovation, R&D, and so on, completely dominated by state policies and systems such as patents, subsidies, a hybrid socialist healthcare system, and other laws, plus the unholy alliance or revolving door between industry and Big Pharma and other sectors and the state.
Because of the 1980 Bayh-Dole Act, government scientists-whose salaries are already paid by the taxpayer-can get a cut of the patent royalties charged by the "Private" Big Pharma companies, from patents granted by their employer, the Federal Government.
Repeal the Bayh-Dole Act and do not permit government employees to get a share of royalties reaped by "Private" companies from patents granted by the federal government for "Innovations" built on tax-funded research.
https://brownstone.org/articles/patents-pharma-government-the-unholy-alliance/
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