Quick Shots: Pills

Here is one heckuva huge idea that very few think about and discuss. If you want to lower the price of prescription medicine significantly, here's the deal. The quickest way to lower costs is to expand the patent rights. Now wait, not in the usual way. Keep the same type of rights, but change the start date of them. See, currently a company spends billions developing a pill and jumping through the FDA hoops, but the 18 year patent starts when BEFORE the company can start the lengthy FDA process. All that time, the company is losing exclusive rights to the pill, 10 years or more. So what would happen if the patent time didn't start until after it was approved? Well, I could imagine the price dropping by almost half. Why? Because the company needs to make its investment back and if it has twice the time, the required price has to be twice what it would be if they had the whole 18 years. Simple accounting.

What would you give for half price on your pills?

(Note: I believe the 18 years is correct, but I could be wrong. Either way, the main point still stands. Companies have exclusive patent rights being wasted while the FDA wastes time approving the pill. That is stupid and raises the price of medications.)