Sounds like a great idea

Of course that means it will never happen. Drug companies have too much control, too much money, and too much power. All the same, if they were all de-chartered (is that a word?), I would be fine with it. Everyone knows that drug companies have no interest whatsoever in seeing people cured of their disease - that would mean no more profits for them, and they can't have that.

From maxspeak:

THE SHORTER DEAN BAKER

I urge everyone to read Dean's longish post below, under my weekend artwork. To that end, let me provide a quick-and-dirty version:

For the relatively modest cost of about $25 billion annually, the U.S. Gov could finance the same volume of drug research currently done under the aegis of private companies, and by virtue of that expenditure, be able to place all discoveries in the public domain, thereby reducing the price of drugs for consumers to zilch. All the discussion about the necessity of patents (with prohibitively high prices and short supply) being essential incentives for research is a giant pile of avian doo-doo.

I would add that given such a new regime, there would be no downside to rescinding all existing patents and placing all drug formulae in the public domain as well. Go ahead, call me a communist and sacrifice yourself on the altar of Pfizer.

The alternative is George Bush preemptively blaming liberals for over-regulation of drug companies and babbling about martial law to deal with an emergency pandemic. And we know how good the Bushists are dealing with emergencies.
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