> This is interesting because the USA claims to pursue a maximum capitalistic society

No it doesn't. This is silly.

Drug prices in the US are high for non-generic drugs because patent law gives the patent holder an artificial government-granted monopoly, which is blatantly not "pure" or "maximum capitalistic".

Generic drugs - where the free market does apply - in the US are as cheap or cheaper than in other countries. See [0]:

  U.S. prices for brand-name originator drugs were 422 percent of prices in
  comparison countries, while U.S. unbranded generics, which we found account for 90
  percent of U.S. prescription volume, were on average cheaper at 67 percent of
  prices in comparison countries, where on average only 41 percent of prescription
  volume is for unbranded generics.

[0] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11147645/

▲ none2585 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I believe you two are arguing the same thing. Maybe the poster could have better worded it "general thought among most people is that the USA ..."

Because you are both absolutely right.

▲ simiones 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The maximum libertarian alternative to patents isn't free-for-all copying, it's trade secret formulas - e.g. Coca Cola. Drug patents actually exist as a compromise given the clear need for the state to force companies to publish their drug formulas for research. Allowing companies to just keep their drugs secret would be even more capitalistic, and would increase drug prices even more.

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ItsMonkk 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This is where prizes come in. If you create a drug and keep it secret, the government can grant you a large prize as an offer to reveal your secret.

This is a much better compromise. The company will end up with more money(and faster!) as a result of this prize than under a patent system - since the patent system induces dead-weight losses, and the government will end up with more lives saved.

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lotsofpulp 39 minutes ago | parent [-]

That is just an inefficient way to spend taxpayer money than straight up paying researchers from the government’s accounts.

The US has an enormously large higher education system with all the expertise and manpower to facilitate large trials of novel medicines. The only thing missing is political will to spend the money, so instead, Eli Lilly or Novartis or Pfizer etc spend investor’s money to do it.

And then taxpayers pay for it in a super convoluted way.

	▲	ItsMonkk 23 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Prizes pay for working results. Grants pay for possibilities. Grants are therefore riskier, and thus we allocate less resources to them. Since the people with the money don't understand the science, these possibilities must then be assessed by bureaucrats, and this causes our best to spend half of their time writing proposals instead of working and researching. A complete waste of time. Let the people who know the most about their subject freedom to take risks, and then they are given the spoils of their rewards if they are proven correct. Prizes are much more efficient than grants. Prizes should be given to academics according to the value they produced. I have no issue if the academics choose to spend some of the windfall profits of their prizes on trials. > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innovation_prize_model

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mothballed 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

They keep their processes secret instead under the current system, achieving a "trade-secret" like result for some drugs. For some drugs it achieves the same thing because finding a practical economic synthesis is the hard part rather than coming upon a small bit of chemical that is proven to be effective. For others it wouldn't matter whether you kept it secret or not, someone would isolate and characterize it and reverse engineer a practical synthesis.

The biggest value protector arguably of the patent-FDA approval process is on the FDA side, who create massive barriers to entry that mitigate close unpatented chemical competitors from outside the pharma oligopoly from competing.

	▲	NoMoreNicksLeft 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Is the patent not for the synthesis route itself, rather than the drug? Someone can't just plop down a chemical formula on a piece of paper and patent that, can they?
	▲	simiones 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I'm not really happy with the current system either - I tend to think that the state should just mandate that all medical research be fully published, and either have companies compete on research and manufacturing, or pay for it directly if it can't be made to work as a private business. My point was just that this is very much not a capitalist or libertarian position.

▲ vjvjvjvjghv 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

"Drug prices in the US are high for non-generic drugs because patent law gives the patent holder an artificial government-granted monopoly, which is blatantly not "pure" or "maximum capitalistic"."

This is very much capitalistic. It's not competitive markets (which are good for consumers) but capitalists hate competition once they have made it to the top.

	▲	parineum 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Capitalism doesn't serve capitalists. It's built to create an environment where the capitalist, doing what they do best, also serves the community. Monopolies are anti-capitalism, despite it being something that capital strives for. This is like being upset that bug spray doesn't actually spray bugs, in fact, it actually deters them.

▲ datsci_est_2015 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

And yet, the defense of the status quo often relies on the supposition that the US is a capitalist nation, perhaps even a “maximally capitalist” one.

I’ll have to keep this in mind the next time it comes up…