Gimme Drugs

On more than one occasion, these missives have cited research that at least many (many people say 'all') *new* drugs over that last decades have been from research done on your tax paying dime. Now Mathew Herper (as I type, not behind the paywall) has taken up the cudgel. He cites the research, but tosses a grenade at the implication.

In the early 1960s, government research at the National Cancer Institute delivered human beings their first real victory against cancer. At the time, two NCI researchers, Emil Frei and Emil Freireich, showed that giving children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia a combination of four high-dose chemotherapy drugs could make cancer temporarily vanish in two-thirds of patients. A third would see their remission last years, and some were cured. It was the first time "cured" and "cancer" could be used in the same sentence.

For the next few decades, the NCI was the epicenter of cancer drug development. Cancer drugs were invented there or discovered by researchers sent on globe-trotting jaunts.

One example he cites

Take Vertex (VRTX) Pharmaceuticals' new drug Trikafta, lauded by the Food and Drug Administration as a "breakthrough" when it was approved in October. Based on research originally funded by the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, a philanthropy, it can help 90% of the people with this deadly, lung-clogging disease, but costs $311,503 a year, 34% more than the median listing price of a house.

So, I'll be so bold as to state the obvious: healthcare is a Social Good, and includes drugs obviously, thus a Back to the Future movement might be in order. Strip out the obscene profit gotten, pay the scientists well (they're the ones who do the actual work, of course), and still save gobs of money. In the end, we all pay for these expensive drugs, whether it's overt Socialism (the Damn Gummint pays directly for the research and for the eventual compounds), and the covert kind practiced by the drug and insurance industries in collusion. Much of it foisted on Medicare and Medicaid, and thus you and me, and the rest on private insurance policy holders, ditto. It's not a coincidence that drug companies have been flocking to CMS covered indications and 'orphan' drugs in the last decade or so. For all their mewling, they're among the most risk averse. They'll do 'research' only if payment is guaranteed. That's how the multi-billion dollar price tag comes about; they stuff in the costs on duds into the costs of approved ones. It's a no lose proposition.