> I think the US is a good example since most pharmaceutical R&D is done in the US. Also, the NIH has a pretty beefy budget. For other countries, the cost of running their on pharma companies would be much more burdensome.
Much R&D may be billed back to the US, or at least billed in USD, but I'd suggest it's been quite some years since even a sizeable minority of actual R&D work has been done within the borders of the US.
Quoting Ben Goldacre in "Bad Pharma" (2012)
"In the past, only 15 per cent of clinical trials were conducted outside the USA. Now it’s more than half. The average rate of growth in the number of trials in India is 20 per cent a year, in China 47 per cent, in Argentina 27 per cent, and so on, simply because they are better at attracting CRO business, at lower cost. At the same time, trials in the US are falling by 6 per cent a year (and in the UK by 10 per cent a year). As a result of these trends, many trials are now being conducted in developing countries, where regulatory oversight is poorer, as is the normal standard of clinical care."
* CRO = Clinical Research Organisation. Precisely as disarmingly harmless as it sounds.
> To answer your first point, you're saying that the cost of R&D would still be born by the end-user (patient). What's the benefit then if it's not saving money?
I wasn't suggesting that money won't be saved.
To the contrary - the cost of R&D is a relatively small component of the current pharma mechanism. Once you eradicate the need to (expensively) mislead and befuddle regulators, medicos, patients, there's a lot more to spend on actual R&D.
> If you think a gov't run company would not pull some of the same stuff the private ones do, I'd have you take a look at some of the corruption that goes on at public companies. A gov't run company might not be for-profit, but someone there has budgets and revenue numbers to meet. The motive to cut corners doesn't disappear when it's run by the gov't.
Rest assured my idealistic interpretation of this impossible world precludes this kind of corruption. :)
> And why shouldn't a pharma company have a sales and marketing budget? Do you think your doctor has time to sit down and analyze all of the clinical trial data? Getting in front of a doctor and touting the benefits of your drug sounds like a good thing to me. Sure, some sales reps use slimy tactics, but overall educating physicians doesn't sound like a bad thing.
Oh my. I'd strongly recommend you spend a few hours to read through Goldacre, B.'s book (ref above). The idea that the pharma industry is 'helping' doctors in their on-going education is ... worrisome, at best.
(Hint: overall .. it's a horrendously bad arrangement for everyone involved apart from the shareholders in the relevant big pharma org)