A little blue pill for you, a cure for me?

I thought I'd share an idea that I've been kicking around for awhile. It began it's germination when I was watching an interview of Michael Moore on the topic of his movie, "Sicko", which I thought I might like to see, but never actually got around to seeing. However, even though I didn't see the movie, the interview alone got me thinking about the pharmaceutical industry in this country, that would be the USA, if you're on the Internet then you're on US territory because we made it and we make it great (with the help of Japan and Europe and South America and Asia...etc). Anyway as one of the many Americans whose health care plan centers around pain tolerance management, I started to think about ways to improve the system. Now it has been my experience that necessity is the mother of invention and usually the people with the best ideas to fix a problem are generally the people dealing with said problem. That being said, it's probably not wise to assume that well paid politicians with the best health care package in the world are going to be quick to act on changing the system or necessitated enough to come up with solutions. I however on the other hand feel like my impoverished condition puts me at a proper perspective to attack the problem.

I've had many a thought on the health care system in this country, but I choose to write about just one for now. I have on occasion had the privilege of sitting in a doctor's waiting room and appropriately enough I've been waiting. One of my favorite things to do while I'm in a doctor's office waiting room is to watch the steady stream of pharmaceutical reps approach the receptionist and barter with her (it's always a her, have you noticed that?) for a few moments of the doctor's time in exchange for product samples, brochures that the doctor never has time to read, clocks, calenders, pens, notepads, and little flashlights that have only one function, entertaining small children and bloggers with Bjorn in their titles. You sit there in you sickened state and watch these intrepid peddlers of pills drag in their bags of goodies like dear old Saint Nick almost oblivious to the end users scattered around them. I've often wanted to ask some of them to skip the middlemen and go right to the source, me. I want free stuff! Sadly most of these pushers of pens and pads often have samples for things I don't really need. This brings me to the point. In this country and probably every other one for that matter, it is more cost effective to develop and manufacture drugs that we don't need then to develop and manufacture drugs that we do need. The reasons for this are many, so I'll only address a couple that I'm aware of. One is that if you manufacture a drug that saves lives, then only a cold hearted scrooge would let someone who couldn't afford it die. No, you need to give it to people for free, or at a price deemed reasonable by politicians worried about reelection. Another reason is because the drugs that save lives often are used by small groups of people. Companies could easily spend a billion dollars developing a cure for a disease that would only be used by a hundred people a year. Now if you're one of those hundred people, this seems like a good idea, until of course the company tells you that it will cost you ten million dollars a dose (much cheaper at the moment if you're earning Euros) which takes us back to the first point. A company could also spend a billion dollars developing said drug for said one hundred people only to not have it approved once it was said finished. Then they wouldn't even have the option of charging someone ten million dollars a dose. They might be able to sell it for two million dollars a dose in Mexico or China, but that's a little sketchy and not in America so it doesn't really apply to a discussion of the American health care system.

So to sum things up, because I noticed that my last paragraph was a bit lengthy, it's more cost effective for companies to manufacture drugs we don't need to live; like erectile dysfunction tablets, new and exotic headache medicines, yet another allergy medication, crack, meth, etc, than to create drugs to save lives. I think, however, that I've come up with a way to make it cost effective for companies to make the drugs we really need. It's fairly simple, so it should make a lot of people angry, at least that's the hope anyway. I think we should allow companies to transfer their patent rights from critical need drugs to non-critical drugs. Now before you shoot my idea down, allow me to explain how this would theoretically work, then you can shoot it down. First we'd need to create a list of critical needs. There are two difficult parts to consider here. Who is "we" and what is a critical need? I think "we" could be a group of experts, such as doctors. A critical need could be defined as a condition that will directly result in death or impairment. These will probably be refined by lawyers if this idea ever goes anywhere, so I'm not to concerned with these definitions at the moment. So this group of "we" gets together and puts out a wish list of cures. Pharmaceutical companies can look over the list and work on the cures. When they develop a cure, they submit it for review. If it is a cure they can have the option of applying some or all of their rights to the drug to another of their non-critical drugs. A company might want to transfer the rights because having the exclusive rights to a critical needs drug may not be worth keeping. Going back to the reasons I gave for not developing them in the first place; they may not be able to sell enough of it at a high enough price to recoup their losses. However, if they could take those years of exclusivity and tack them onto the end of a less important, but better selling drug, then they have something to work for.

I don't know if I'm being very clear, so allow me to give an example. Say Pfizer has a big time money maker, perhaps a little blue pill for instance, that isn't critical for saving lives, but lots of people want. This pill is making them a boatload of money. However, after a certain amount of time, anybody will be allowed to make these little blue pills and sell them for whatever they want. Suddenly, Pfizer isn't making as much money as they used to. If my system was in place, Pfizer could have a way to keep the little blue pill and all of its profits all to themselves for a longer period of time. Pfizer scientists would look at the critical need list and come up with a way to cure something like Hurler Schie Syndrome. At which point, Pfizer could decide, do we want to charge a few people half a million dollars a dose for this stuff, or would we like to keep exclusive rights for our little blue pill for an additional ten years (number of years is negotiable in this idea, I just chose ten because I'm a decimal kind of guy). Most likely Pfizer would chose the blue pill and suddenly the cure for Hurler Schie Syndrome goes straight to the open market as a generic that can be manufactured by anyone. We might even allow for a government sponsored generics program to subsidize their manufacture, for instance companies that manufacture them could get tax breaks. In the end, Pfizer would be able to recoup its losses and then some by keeping it's little blue pill in a monogamous relationship for a little while longer and sufferers of Hurler Schie Syndrome would have a cure with a reasonable price.

Are there problems with this idea? Let me know what you think they are. I can't see any, but that's probably because my head is swollen up because I can't afford the proper medication.