While we scream for cheaper medication, are pharma companies always the black sheep?
Thread:

In 2005, Bayer developed Nexavar, a life saving cancer drug. Pharmaceuticals spend millions of dollars to develop drugs. This was no exception. Cost: $96k/year.

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The catch here is that it is only available to ultra rich.
It is obviously protected by Patent Laws worldwide.
What India did was it invoked Compulsory Licensing of WTO, and gave a local company the job a developing the generic version of Nexavar under Indian Patent Laws 1970.
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The cost came down to $2500 vs $96000 before. That is a humongous cut making it affordable.
Bayer appealed against the move in the court but lost. Indian Court ordered the local company to pay 6% of the revenue from $2500 generic drug to Bayer as royalty...

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...which is certainly nowhere enough to recover the costs.
Pharmaceutical companies spend considerable amount of resources in Research and Development. Sometimes they are successful, most times they are not. The successful drugs have to make up the costs of failures as well.

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Hence the high cost. They deserve to earn as well. Don't they?
So here is the problem. The rich people who could earlier afford expensive Nexavar will now definitely switch to its generic version (those who can't afford will buy generic anyways).

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This leaves Bayer with no customer base, causing huge revenue losses and no cost recovery.
So why would a company invest so much when there is a fear of such 'unjust' actions like Compulsory Licensing. There are no incentives left.

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Now anyone with a functional moral compass will support the actions of Indian Government as well.
After all right to life is a basic Human Right, and why should the poor be excluded from it.

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This leaves us with a dilemma. If the company stops R&D, there will be no such drugs available for anyone. But if it continues, there is always a chance of no/less recovery.

What is your solution to this problem?

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