US Politics Mega-thread - Page 3214

On May 06 2021 17:34 EnDeR_ wrote:
Covid is a long-term, global problem. Establishing a spirit of cooperation is important and marks a clear departure from the previous administration.

On May 06 2021 18:41 GreenHorizons wrote:


Came on the heels of video of his promising Ady Barkan to do so on the campaign going around and being contrasted with how his administration/the US was still leading the charge against releasing the patents.

Not entirely clear what the US is "negotiating" over before committing but many people that have been calling for this for months see it more as a reluctant capitulation out of fear of what protecting pharma profits could cost other sectors of the west's economies, than establishing any real sense of cooperation.

On May 06 2021 18:45 Jockmcplop wrote:

I don't think its the great benevolent idea that everyone else seems to think it is.
Its going to hit pharma profits.
Whenever pharma profits are hit, who ends up paying for it?
The poorest people in the world, the sick ones anyway.
The notion that massive pharmaceutical companies will respond to a huge hit in their profits with 'oh, well i guess that money is just lost then' is ridiculous. They simply move the loss to a section of the public that no-one cares about.

On May 06 2021 18:51 Simberto wrote:


That implies that the pharma companies do not already try to milk as much money as humanly possible out of those people.

Basically, you assume that there is some untapped reservoir where pharma could make more money if they inflict more misery. I don't think there is. If they could "move those losses to a section of the public that no one cares about", why should they wait for the losses to appear before doing that, instead of just making that money right now.

On May 06 2021 18:58 Jockmcplop wrote:

Hmm...
I don't have a comprehensive enough knowledge of markets in Sub Saharan Africa to really comment on that, but I'm assuming that there is always some way, somewhere, that more profits can be made by increasing prices when you have a monopoly on the market.

On May 06 2021 20:35 EnDeR_ wrote:


Which comes back to Simberto's point, if that was that easy, why not do it already? Pharma companies are not some paragon of ethics.

On May 06 2021 18:41 GreenHorizons wrote:


Came on the heels of video of his promising Ady Barkan to do so on the campaign going around and being contrasted with how his administration/the US was still leading the charge against releasing the patents.

Not entirely clear what the US is "negotiating" over before committing but many people that have been calling for this for months see it more as a reluctant capitulation out of fear of what protecting pharma profits could cost other sectors of the west's economies, than establishing any real sense of cooperation.

On May 06 2021 20:39 Jockmcplop wrote:


So is the argument that the pharma market has now reached the absolute limit of its potential for more profit?

On May 06 2021 20:39 Jockmcplop wrote:


So is the argument that the pharma market has now reached the absolute limit of its potential for more profit?

On May 06 2021 20:51 EnDeR_ wrote:


I don't think that's true, there's huge potential for more profit to be made from new medications. What I understood from Simberto's point was that you can't just increase the price of existing medication in other countries to offset a loss from a different product because if they could, why wouldn't they be doing it already? Big pharma isn't exactly known for its humanitarian efforts, is what I'm saying.

On May 06 2021 20:54 Simberto wrote:


No, the argument is that i do not think that there is some huge reservoir of profits which pharma companies could take, but choose not to due to their ethics.

For your argument to work, this reservoir would need to exist. Pharma companies would currently not be exploiting it, but start to exploit it given sufficient losses.

My assumption is that if such a reservoir would exist, and pharma companies would feel capable of exploiting it, they would be doing it already. They wouldn't wait to take some losses to start that exploitation.

On May 06 2021 20:42 EnDeR_ wrote:


I'd take a reluctant capitulation over aggressively doubling down on stupid policy any day of the week. Biden also delivered millions of AZ vaccine doses to India. I don't see the previous administration doing anything for 'shithole' countries at the cost of potential American wellbeing. Don't get me wrong, Biden was not my favorite candidate either, but so far, he's exceeding all my expectations.

On May 06 2021 08:40 ChristianS wrote:
My limited understanding of the issue (I’m mostly parroting Derek Lowe’s analysis, although it’s pretty consistent with my experience in industry) is that waiving intellectual property protections on the vaccines will do very little to increase supply. It’s just not a bottleneck. Think of it this way: if you had a lab with production capacity for lipid nanoparticles and the only thing stopping you from manufacturing Moderna’s vaccine was patent law, you probably would have already reached out to Moderna and offered to contract with them to add your production capacity and help them meet demand quicker. This has really been an all-hands-on-deck thing for the whole industry already, the limiting factors are almost certainly either various raw materials, or industrial equipment, or most likely, knowledge and talent available to handle the quality assurance and make sure the stuff is safe.

Not that waiving the IP hurts anything (well, Moderna and Pfizer stock price probably, but I’m not too worried about them). It just feels like people are seeing an ideological issue (i.e. we’re intentionally making less vaccine than we should to preserve corporate profits) when it’s really a logistical one (i.e. we have limited resources available to manufacture vaccine and we need to make optimal use of them).

On May 06 2021 21:03 Jockmcplop wrote:

I was having a similar discussion a couple of months ago and i found an scholarly article showing how drug prices in Africa are always affected by regulation in the US, like always.
I wish I could find it again!
I get what you're saying, I'm just not sure it works like that when you look at the details. There are plenty of poor (not so poor that donations etc. provide drugs) countries who simply do not have the ability to negotiate with drug companies, so they are essentially set on the whim of big pharma depending on what their profit situation is looking like worldwide.

You might be right, but its something people should be aware of when looking at policy that will negatively effect big pharma profits. They will definitely try and recoup those losses from somewhere, which is essentially just moving the cost of the vaccine instead of removing it.



See above. I'm not saying anything for sure, but I can't see big pharma just smiling and saying 'oh well I guess that money is lost then'.

The drug market is not like a normal market. It is essentially either hyper competitive or a total monopoly depending on the drug. We have seen very often how drug companies will suddenly massively increase the price of a drug out of nowhere in order to recoup losses. I don't know why people think it will be different this time.

The Effects of Patent Protection on the Prices of Pharmaceutical Products

Is Intellectual Property Protection Raising the Drug Bill in
Developing Countries?

Our empirical analysis of pharmaceutical prices for products from six
therapeutic categories in nine developing countries suggests that improving IPP does
not have a measurable impact on real or nominal prices of existing drugs (those
marketed before the implementation of Ipp). Moreover, in our set of countries with
price regulation, IPP had little, if any, impact on price changes of all drugs, including
those introduced after the change in patent protection. In cases where prices
increased, other developments, such as the easing of price regulation in Mexico, are
likely causes. However, we were unable to determine whether such increases were
solely a result of these developments or if IPP played a role. Therapeutic
competition, regulation of pharmaceutical prices, monopsony buyers, and, most
importantly, the actual provisions of the IP laws are four factors that keep prices for
pharmaceutical products from increasing as a result of IPP

On May 06 2021 21:15 Belisarius wrote:

I still think it's worthwhile. Yes, most places with capacity ready to go are already in, but it's reasonable that there might be other groups a step below who could work towards it. I'm thinking advanced local networks with talent and hardware tied up in universities etc where it's possible but very costly to redeploy, or developing nations that might have had trouble making the approach and being taken seriously. This gives everyone some surety that they can go ahead and jump in without having to worry about moderna pulling the rug out from under them halfway.

I agree that it's a more symbolic gesture than a practical one, and very few of those groups are likely to succeed in any useful timespan, but we still have to run a marathon after the sprint is over and some will get there eventually. At worst it's a risk knocked off the matrix for anyone still considering a play, and there's got to be projects out there that it pushes over the line.

On May 07 2021 00:49 ChristianS wrote:

I admit I’m not sure exactly how this is going to work. The obvious implication would be that because of this decision, other manufacturers are free to develop a generic. That could bring the price down, but it won’t get the vaccines out any quicker because generics have to go through their own approval process to demonstrate bioequivalency. Moderna will already have done a lot of scientific work that they’d have to duplicate to get approved.

Alternatively we could somehow obligate Moderna to work with anyone who wants to make vaccine, use their labs and methods, and put it out under Moderna’s authorization? In which case the only thing that’s changed here is Moderna being able to turn someone down or get paid for the work?

My work in industry has all been in analytical chemistry, and generally focused on small molecule drugs, so maybe there’s something about vaccines that differs from the stuff I’m familiar with. You get the sense this is primarily focused on international manufacturing for international demand, so maybe all this means is that an Indian company can make a generic Moderna vaccine and get it approved outside the US without us making noise about copyright violations?