This is the best summary I could come up with:
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration is putting pharmaceutical companies on notice, warning them that if the price of certain drugs is too high, the government might cancel their patent protection and allow rivals to make their own versions.
Under a plan announced Thursday, the government would consider overriding the patent for high-priced drugs that have been developed with the help of taxpayer money and letting competitors make them in hopes of driving down the cost.
With health care costs in mind, the administration also sent a warning Thursday to private equity firms that have been buying up and gutting hospitals and physician practices around the country, then selling for a profit.
While only a minority of drugs on the market relied so heavily on taxpayer dollars, the threat of a government “march-in” on patents will make many pharmaceutical companies think twice, said Jing Luo, a professor of medicine at University of Pittsburgh.
The pharmaceutical lobby immediately pushed back on Biden’s announcement, arguing the White House’s interpretation of the law is inaccurate and their plan will stifle drug research and development.
“This would be yet another loss for American patients who rely on public-private sector collaboration to advance new treatments and cures,” said Megan Van Etten, a spokesperson for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, or PhRMA.
The original article contains 757 words, the summary contains 218 words. Saved 71%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Yeah I think the first reaction to this was too hot. The government probably doesn’t want to seize patents and this is really meant as a warning to get pharma to keep drug prices down more reasonable prices.
If you develop drugs using tax payer money, then that has to be paid back in some way. Either as a percentage of profits (based on percentage invested), paying back the investment (with interest) or an agreement on a cheaper price. Or something else.
Pharma has had it’s cake and eating it for far too long.
Nothing that is being suggested is unreasonable here.
Wild you don’t even suggest the patent to be open, like researchers have to do when they are taxpayer funded.
Why is it ‘wild’? I said or something else which I think covers it.
By that premise it’s ‘wild’ you didn’t suggest the other thousand things they can do.
Maybe we’re both just trying to talk about a better way of doing it without being experts.
I think he meant it’s wild we’ve been conditioned to not even think about government takeover of publicly funded assets. Like it still feels like the nuclear option even to Americans who believe they are socialists. Not that your comment was insufficient. I understand why you would feel defensive, the Internet can be a mean place.
If it’s a drug that is completely government funded then it should be open. If the drug company has some skin in the game than allowing them to profit from the patent is not unreasonable if, and I mean if, the government gets something like a share of the profits or the ability to manufacture the drug as if they had a built in license. Just free money is corporate welfare. And we know what the right think of welfare.
how is this technology?
Technology is not just integrated circuits.
This is biotech and patents, both firmly relevant to technology overall.
Sounds like a toothless threat, following through would upset too many campaign donors.
It’s not toothless. There is an existing law that allows the government to issue their own licenses for drugs still under patent developed using at least some amount of tax payer money under certain circumstances. It’s pretty broadly worded in the law when this can be done, so previously regulations were made to define the circumstances more precisely. The administration is issuing a new regulation that says one of those circumstances will now include if the drug is high priced limiting its access. Because new regulations issued by the executive branch have a mandatory public comment period after they are proposed before they take effect, its not active quite yet but will be soon (that’s why every headline about this is using the dumb vague word of threaten). The drug companies are already promising to sue to try and overturn the new regulation. So yeah it’s got teeth.
The corporate christofascist supreme court will overturn any executive power expansion as long as their team is not the executive.
Maybe. Hopefully not. All the more reason to follow every little process for new executive regulations flawlessly when enacting it, like the 6 month comment period. A lot of people are saying just do it immediately. But that’d just be giving the pharma companies and republicans an easy out to strike it down in the courts.
Thank you, I came to this comment section hoping someone would explain what exactly the basis in law was for this.
This is the specific law Biden is trying to derive the authority from if you’re interested in more:
