Comment on Moderna’s mRNA cancer vaccine works even better than thought
ricecake@sh.itjust.works 8 months agoYou actually can. The simplest way is to literally just give the research away and charge a fair price for the medicine. That’s allowed.
The slightly more capitalist way would be to sell the rights to the government to recoup costs.
The slightly less capitalist way is for the government to notify you that you don’t own it anymore because of the public good.
This is also ignoring exactly how much the public already funds the basic research that goes into pharmaceuticals, which is quite a bit more than you might expect, so the argument of what’s even “fair” is less clearly in favor of the company than you might expect.
jj4211@lemmy.world 8 months ago
There’s a tricky balance.
For every endeavor that could recoup its costs in a fairly reasonable way, there are several other attempts that end in failure.
If you know that best case your project can be modestly better than break even, but it will most likely completely fail, would you invest in it?
I could respect an argument for outright socializing pharmaceutical efforts and rolling the needs into taxes and cutting out the capitalist angle entirely, but so long as you rely on capitalist funding model in any significant amount, then you have to allow for some incentive. When the research is pretty much fully funded by public funds, that funding should come with strings attached, but here it seems the lead up was largely in capitalist territory.
Neekaneeka@lemmynsfw.com 8 months ago
Your answers are very speculative when they could easily be verified.
How big are the operating loans of a pharmaceutical company? Specifically those who mature over the course of a development cycle?
Construction is commonly financed through loans which get covered in the sales price, so it’s a tried and true method with foreseeable margins and robust risk assessment. And notably covered in the annual reports of their finances.
I find it hard to believe pharmaceuticals should be very different, and the lack of receipts makes it very dubious that’s the costs they’re covering.
You made the claim though, please provide some evidence to back it up.