Plenty of incentives for new drugs exist in the European model.
Perhaps, but you don't make or quote any argument for that idea.
The assertion that European drug manufacturers are more efficient is both unsupported, and irrelevant.
If, as you assert, European drug research efforts are more efficient, that doesn't imply that the total amount of research done, or even just the amount done in Europe, would not decline if it wasn't for the relatively high prices in the US market.
Also, since the NIH was paying for almost half of the R&D in the U.S. pharmaceutical field ($27 billion vs. $33 billion by industry in 2003
An overwhelming majority of the cost to turn the compounds in to final usable drugs, and then to test them for approval is done by and/or paid for by the private sector, mostly with the hope of getting a profitable return on the investment in the development and testing.
What will (and should) disappear is marketing of new drugs that provide no advantage over current drugs.
1 - Generally its not know whether or not a drug will provide advantages over current drugs before you develop and test it. I suppose if you where to drop such drugs you might save the final one percent or less of development costs but it doesn't seem to be worth it, once you've done almost all the work, you might as well sell the drug.
2 - Different drugs with the same overall effectiveness for the same disorder, may be more or less effective for particular people, or may have different side effects which different people can tolerate to varying degrees.
3 - Even drugs that really had identical effects (which is rarely the case, even if very similar effects might be common enough), would be useful in terms of adding additional competition. |
