Just when you think you've heard every crazy socialist idea that President Biden and his Democrat allies can dream up, they come out of left field with a move so stunning that it threatens to disrupt the entire medical industry, and possibly forever.
What most people haven't heard, or more accurately haven't been told, is that President Biden has announced that he plans on revoking the patent protections on the COVID-19 vaccines which will allow for generic copies of the vaccines to be made. Many of them will be made in foreign countries which means that the companies that did all of the research will not even get a pittance in return for their investment.
This is the thanks that these companies get for rushing into action in response to the government's call for a vaccine?
How apropos.
Medical drug research is one of the single most expensive things that medicine manufacturers engage in. It's more than their litigation funds, it's more than their distribution costs, it's more than their manufacturing costs, heck, it's even more than their sales costs. It is BY FAR the most expensive thing that they do, and it's so much so, that you could roll up almost any combination of the other costs and it still would not equal the costs spent on research.
Here's a newsflash for you, A LOT of that research fails. It comes to nothing and the drugs either never work, don't works as well as they wanted them to, or can't get approved by the government because of side effects. All of that cost is paid for by the medicines that do work, and do get to market.
Yet, what about this one? Well, it looks like they won't get that chance.
We may never know how many bad strains these manufacturers sunk money into in order to make their vaccines. We may never know the high cost of coming up with something like this in this kind of time frame. Yes, they got some government grants, but most of that was for distributive and manufacturing costs. They were supposed to make up the research costs by selling the medicine. Except now they won't be able to, and other medical companies, who DID NOTHING TO PARTICIPATE IN THE RESEARCH will get to benefit and profit off of their work.
And by the way, did I mention that they're foreign companies and that our government won't get any tax money on that at all?
So now, imagine if you're a board member or stock holder in Pfizer (newsflash, if you have a 401.k, IRA, FGMI Annuity, or Mutual Fund you are) and you realize that the company is about to take a complete bath on the research costs for their widely successful vaccine. Are you likely to keep your money in knowing that a stock decrease in coming?
You see, not only will this move hamstring them in the future by cutting off profits in the future, they're going to take serious hits to their stock prices which will damage current capital funding abilities to... yep, you guessed it, research new medicines. Talk about a double whammy!
So why would one of these companies ever trust the government again?
Why would their board members jump up and say, "let's go do this, the government will be fair to us!"
They won't, and we'll all be worse for it.
By the way, if you were wondering if this vaccine might spur new vaccine research into other diseases that we haven't had a vaccine for before (this is THE FIRST corona virus vaccine of any kind even though they've been around literally forever), don't hold your breath. This only disincentivises companies from engaging in smaller research because if they're going to have to also fight legal patent battles over their drugs, then they have to be even that much more CERTAIN that their drugs will be profitable.
The biggest losers will be the American people, and truthfully the world, as over 85% of all new medicines come from America and American companies. Hanging the bill around their neck only makes them less willing to participate in the future.
But hey, we'll all "feel good about it right now."
The future can take care of itself, right?