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Comment by vijayboyapati | Hacker News Reader

I gave a lecture on this at the University of Washington in 2010 and it covers intellectual property as one of the four major causes for the cost of health care in the US: http://mises.org/daily/4434

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That doesn't really pass the sniff test. Drug spending accounts for ~10% of all healthcare spending in the US.

The US pay about 10-30% more for drugs than the US. If the US was paying EU prices, it would reduce the total healthcare expenditure by 1-2%?

Right now the US spends almost 50% more than other OECD countries.

My claim was not that it was the only factor, but that it was a major factor - I list three other major factors, the first being the most important. Comparison to the EU misses the point; both the EU and the US have intellectual property laws creating monopolies over drug production. The comparison should be to the state of the world if intellectual property law was not in force. There is little evidence that this would lead to a major reduction in production, although drug companies would really like you to believe this.

I agree with your other 3 points.

I don't agree that new drug production would stay the same without patents. Why would a drug company spend $100M-$1B to make a new drug, when the next company can start selling it for $0.10 per pill?

I covered that in the article:

"In particular, Boldrin and Levine devote a chapter of their book, Against Intellectual Monopoly, to the pharmaceutical industry. They argue that the actual cost of bringing drugs to market is substantially lower than the estimates produced by the pharmaceutical industry — a group with a vested interest in lobbying for strong patent protections. They also provide evidence that in many instances the existence of patents hinders research in drug production."

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