They would contribute their share of funding to the research pool and they would then have the right to produce any vaccines or treatments that are developed. If it turned out to be the case that a U.S. drug company was the first to come up with an effective vaccine, any company with the necessary manufacturing facilities would be able to freely produce and distribute the vaccine anywhere in the world. They would not need to negotiate over patent rights.
The same would be true if, as now seems to be the case, China turned out to develop the first effective vaccine. Our manufacturers would be free to start producing the vaccine as soon as it received the necessary approvals from the Food and Drug Administration. There would be no issue of people here going without the vaccine just because the developer was a Chinese company.
It's not surprising that Donald Trump did not go the route of cooperative development. His first priority is advancing his own political prospects and if he thinks that means having the U.S. win a vaccine race, that is what he is going to do. And, he certainly has no intention of pursuing a course that could limit drug company profits.
But the big question is where were the Democrats? If they were objecting to the path of vaccine nationalism and monopoly, it was not easy to hear their complaints. And, I'm not talking just about centrist Democrats like Biden, Pelosi, and Schumer, I also didn't hear complaints from the Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren wing of the party. Why were there no objections to the Trump course and advocacy for a cooperative alternative?
Going a cooperative route would not just offer benefits in the context of developing vaccines and treatments for the coronavirus, although these benefits would be incredibly important. It also could have provided a great model of an alternative path for financing the development of prescription drugs.
We will spend over $500 billion this year on prescription drugs. We would pay less than $100 billion if these drugs were available in a free market without patent monopolies and related protections. The $400 billion in annual savings is more than five times what we spend on food stamps each year. It comes close to $3,000 per household. In other words, it is real money.
Patent and copyright monopolies are also a big part of the upward redistribution of income over the last four decades. If we had alternatives mechanisms for financing innovation and creative work, people like Bill Gates would be much less rich, and the rest of us would have far more money.
Again, it is easy to understand why Donald Trump would have zero interest in promoting world health and reducing inequality. It's also understandable that politicians who are dependent on campaign contributions from those who have benefitted from upward redistribution, would not want to pursue routes that call into question the mechanisms of upward redistribution.
But where were the progressive voices? The pandemic gave us an extraordinary opportunity to experiment with an alternative mechanism for financing research that could have enormously benefitted public health, both in the United States and elsewhere. The failure to have a visible alternative will cost both lives and money long into the future.
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