{"id":556,"date":"2020-12-01T07:14:33","date_gmt":"2020-12-01T07:14:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=129732"},"modified":"2020-12-01T07:14:33","modified_gmt":"2020-12-01T07:14:33","slug":"14-the-case-for-a-public-pharmaceutical-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2020\/12\/01\/14-the-case-for-a-public-pharmaceutical-system\/","title":{"rendered":"#14. The Case for a Public Pharmaceutical System"},"content":{"rendered":"

A September 2019 report by the Democracy Collaborative outlined a model for a democratic public pharmaceutical system, as Fran Quigley reported for Common Dreams. According to the report<\/a>, the existing pharmaceutical industry, which depends on government-granted patent monopolies, \u201coperates on an extractive model that contributes to inequality and increasingly produces drug shortages, inefficiency, lagging innovation, misinformation and misuse of medications, and most famously, the world\u2019s highest drug prices.\u201d Instead of piecemeal reform of existing patent and anti-trust laws or government provisions of health insurance\u2014any of which could later be repealed\u2014public ownership of pharmaceutical development, production, and distribution offers a systemic approach to fixing Big Pharma\u2019s most fundamental flaws, according to \u201cMedicine for All,\u201d the Democracy Collaborative\u2019s report.<\/p>\n

The Democracy Collaborative model<\/a> includes plans for a national public pharmaceutical research and development institute for developing new drugs to meet public health needs; state, local, and regional public pharmaceutical manufacturers; regionally owned and operated public wholesale distributors; and engaging the US Postal Service as a partner for pharmaceutical distribution.<\/p>\n

As Fran Quigley wrote for Common Dreams, the foundation for these changes is \u201calready in place\u201d because public funding \u201chas long been the bedrock of pharmaceutical research and development.\u201d From 2010 to 2016, \u201cevery single one\u201d of 210 newly approved drugs traced their origins back to taxpayer-sponsored research, Quigley reported, based on a study<\/a> published by PNAS<\/i> in March 2018.<\/p>\n

In almost every case, Dean Baker wrote in Truthout in July 2019, drugs are \u201ccheap to manufacture,\u201d but government-granted patent monopolies make them expensive for consumers. Both Baker\u2019s Truthout article and a report for MintPress News by Alan MacLeod addressed the explanations for high drug prices typically made by defenders of the current system. In the existing model, \u201cit is expensive to develop new drugs\u201d and patent monopolies provide companies incentives to take the risks necessary to do so, Baker related. But, he wrote, there is \u201cnothing natural\u201d about a patent-based system for financing drug research and development. Instead, patent monopolies give drug companies \u201can enormous incentive to push their drugs as widely as possible.\u201d The opioid crisis, he noted, is an extreme case of how drug companies exaggerate their drugs\u2019 benefits and conceal their negative side effects. But, Baker wrote, \u201cPurdue Pharma would not have been pushing OxyContin so vigorously if it were selling at generic prices.\u201d [Note<\/i>: On Big Pharma\u2019s \u201cdocumented history\u201d of dangerous and illegal misbranding, and its multi-billion dollar expenditures to influence doctors\u2019 prescribing decisions, also see Brown, \u201cMedicine for All<\/a>,\u201d 19.]<\/p>\n

The current system also leads to lost government revenues\u2014which could otherwise be directed to healthcare and public services\u2014through tax evasion: As revealed by the Panama Papers, in 2015 ten of the thirty US companies holding the most money offshore were pharmaceutical companies, which together held more than $506 billion in offshore accounts<\/a> not subject to US taxes.<\/p>\n

Publicly-owned pharmaceuticals, freed from the financial demand to appease profit-hungry shareholders, would be able to focus on public health priorities, working hand-in-hand with public health departments, as they do in other countries, to assure an adequate supply of medications, priced to be accessible to the broadest array of Americans. As Fran Quigley reported for Common Dreams, Sweden, Brazil, Cuba, Thailand, and China (among others) \u201cembrace public ownership in key components of their medicines systems,\u201d offering working examples of what could be achieved in the United States.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Although the United States has a reputation for being \u201cpolitically and culturally suspicious of public systems replacing markets,\u201d two-thirds of Americans \u201csupport making prescription drugs public goods paid for by the federal government,\u201d and eight in ten support \u201cbreaking patent monopolies to reduce drug prices,\u201d Quigley reported. [Note<\/i>: A September 2019 New Republic<\/i> article noted that the public is \u201cmad as hell about drug prices\u201d and cited the results of March 2019 Kaiser Family Foundation poll, which found that 79 percent of respondents believed drug prices were unreasonable, 80 percent attributed that partly to drug company profits, and 89 percent\u2014including 85 percent of Republicans\u2014favored making it easier for generics to come to market. See Libby Watson, \u201cDemocrats\u2019 Drug Price Bill May be Dead on Arrival,\u201d New Republic<\/i>, September 20, 2019, https:\/\/newrepublic.com\/article\/155140\/democrats-drug-price-bill-may-dead-arrival<\/a>.]<\/p>\n

In February 2020, Public Citizen published a report showing how the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the limits of Big Pharma\u2019s monopoly model. Public Citizen\u2019s \u201cBlind Spot\u201d report determined that, since the 2002 severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak, the National Institutes of Health have invested \u201cnearly $700 million [in taxpayer funding] on coronavirus R&D.\u201d Indeed, all six of the coronavirus clinical trials active in 2019 \u201cdepended crucially on public funding.\u201d Although \u201cmore sustained interest in coronaviruses could have provided greater scientific understanding, and a stronger toolkit to inform the latest response,\u201d Zain Rizvi wrote, the private sector has lagged behind in developing treatments for infectious diseases because they are \u201cless lucrative\u201d than medicines for chronic conditions and rare diseases. As Rizvi\u2019s Public Citizen report concluded, the COVID-19 crisis highlights the \u201curgent need\u201d for an alternative to the existing \u201cmonopoly-based model,\u201d which prioritizes short-term corporate profits over public health.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

While consistently covering partisan political disputes over prescription drug prices, corporate news media have been relatively mute in reporting on proposals to develop a public pharmaceutical alternative to Big Pharma. In particular, as of May 2020 no corporate news outlets appear to have covered the Democracy Collaborative\u2019s \u201cMedicine for All\u201d report.<\/p>\n

\n

Fran Quigley, \u201cRemoving the Profit from Our Pills: The Case for a Public Pharma System,\u201d Common Dreams, September 18, 2019, https:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/views\/2019\/09\/18\/removing-profit-our-pills-case-public-pharma-system<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Dean Baker, \u201cReplace Patent Monopolies with Direct Public Funding for Drug Research,\u201d Truthout, July 1, 2019,\u00a0https:\/\/truthout.org\/articles\/replace-patent-monopolies-with-direct-public-funding-for-drug-research\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Alan MacLeod, \u201cEconomist Dean Baker: Systemic Change Needed to Fight Big Pharma Price Gouging,\u201d MintPress News, December 12, 2019,\u00a0https:\/\/www.mintpressnews.com\/dean-baker-gilead-hiv-pofits-drug-prices\/263412\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Zain Rizvi, \u201cBlind Spot: How the COVID-19 Outbreak Shows the Limits of Pharma\u2019s Monopoly Model,\u201d Public Citizen, February 19, 2020, https:\/\/www.citizen.org\/article\/blind-spot\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Student Researchers:<\/b> Jennifer Pope (San Francisco State University) and Amber Yang (Sonoma State University)<\/p>\n

Faculty Evaluator:<\/b>\u00a0Kenn Burrows (San Francisco State University)<\/p>\n

The post #14. The Case for a Public Pharmaceutical System<\/a> appeared first on Project Censored<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A September 2019 report by the Democracy Collaborative outlined a model for a democratic public pharmaceutical system, as Fran Quigley reported for Common Dreams. According to the report,\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,302],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/71"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=556"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":557,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556\/revisions\/557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}