COVID-19 treatments to enter the market with a hefty price tag

[BumRushDaShow]

18. Well now you can't say that pharmaceutical products "give little to no benefit to the taxpayers".

The COVID vaccines are an obvious "benefit" as are literally thousands of other life-saving therapeutics that are successfully in use today.

But what you see in these "early stages" of the rollout of a medical product, is what happens while the progenitor attempts to recoup costs knowing that not long from now, generics will be out there, often at a fraction of the price.

Big pharma has tended to game that system by buying up and/or already owning companies that produce generics, so they can rack in $$$ offering both. But all in all, that market is not of "little benefit". They generally have patent protection for upwards of 20 years after patent issuance and in most cases, the continuing development, formulations, clinical trials, reformulations, etc., can eat up over half that time, leading to maybe 5 - 10 years of exclusivity where they can gouge) before the patent expires, and generics are generally approved.

IMHO, what is of "little benefit" is the entire MIC. Sure they often innovate some cool tech that can have other uses, but little of that is immediately "beneficial" to the average taxpayer.