evilgenius wrote:What you are saying looks as if it could come with a high probability of undesirable unintended consequences. Imagine, for instance, some bacterial development that required us to kick antibiotic research up a few notches, but we couldn't meet the challenge because of the financial condition of pharmaceutical companies after a Trump industry shakeup? Imagine the wars within those companies for control, in the wake of the opportunity to seize power manifesting itself due to extreme volatility of stock prices? Those wars would be certain to come with obstruction of both vision and long term decision making. People within an organization act differently when they can't be certain a governing regime will retain power more than a short time. They don't necessarily change everything they do to match the new vision, wondering if they oughtn't to stay ready for a change of plans when the next CEO comes in.
You are sounding like a corporate lobbyist for the pharmaceutical industry who is basically saying that state of the art drugs are only possible if Uncle Sam subsidizes our industry which is what is actually happening with the price protections in place that cause US citizens to pay sometimes 10 - 20 times the prices for drugs than you see in other countries.
And your hypothetical example of an urgently needed anti-biotic actually is good to point out another strategic marketing decision that pharmaceutical companies took years ago when they failed to develop new antibiotics because these drugs actually cure you of disease. That makes their research and development a low priority for drug companies because you can only sell a single dose. Much better to develop anti-statins and spend hundreds of millions on marketing and creating incentives for doctors to prescribe them because these are pills that you take for decades. Chronic medication is the principal area of R&D for drug companies, not actually curing you of illness. It is only after 3 decades of drugs like Zocor and Lipitor that suddenly the truth comes out that these anti-statins where marginal in as a control of cholestrol and heart disease in most cases.
How about cancer drugs and the billions of dollars that the industry makes in prescribing chemo-therapies long past their effectiveness in terminal patients. How the industry plays on the desperate hope of loved ones who spend billions and billions when these patients should be given morphine and made comfortable instead of milked for the last dollar.
It is a deeply cynical industry, sick to the core in the way profits drive R&D and the way procedures and drugs are prescribed. Most folks still see the doctor in the white coat or watch the advertisements and actually believing that there still exists this hippocratic oath that drives the health care industry. That is long gone. It is a money game, cynical and driven by greed and profit. It's a sick industry. I was in it for 25 years and know what I am talking about.
Nobody wants to open this can of worms.
It is a metaphor actually for much of what we discuss here. To cure the problem requires a short term correction and financial hit. Long term solutions require this to happen but you wont find a politician with the integrity to confront this.
Same applies to energy, climate change, our deeply indebted financial system... Everyone is afraid of the short term pain required to reform sick industries.