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Comment by s1artibartfast | Hacker News Reader

It is unclear what differentiates EQRx from other pharma companies. As the article points out:

>The idea of creating a “fast-follower” — a new drug that is much like an existing one — is anything but new.

All I see is the claim to come in with competitive pricing - something else that is anything but new.

>But fast-followers do not compete on price, because lowering price has not historically resulted in selling more units of a drug.

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It is also weird that he talks about the reason he raised prices at companies in the past was because it was fiduciary to shareholders. Then he starts a new company with VC money. I might be more believing if the company was a B corp.

We need a different approach to drug development that is not this. The big issue with drugs is that there are only legal protections for generics and other countries have far different bargaining power. We need some kind of shared risk and reimbursement model with every country having access to the ability to buy or create generics based on them paying to support the research. This is something that could be easily spearheaded by a Gates foundation or its ilk.

What do you mean by there are only legal protections for generics? As I understand it, original developers have the protections, not generics .

that last quote seems strange to me. There are certainly instances where fast followers price lower and got significant share. The hepatitis c market is a good recent example. Gilead had the first drug and then two other companies followed shortly thereafter pricing at ~20-50% discounts and got significant share

Yeah, I believe a number of biosimilars have entered the market with steep discounts as well.

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