[pompino]

>The little-known structures in tax-friendly destinations have contributed to the 15 pharmaceutical firms amassing profits of €580 billion in the last five years.

>This amount outweighs their research and development (R&D) costs, despite the industry's frequent claim that high drug prices allow them to innovate and design new drugs.

R&D is one thing, but most drugs fail at the clinical trial stage. This money (hundreds of millions per drug) is just gone, unlike R&D which might result in new tech or at least a patent. For Oncology its even worse, its close to a 95% failure rate. Simply taxing companies won't make their drugs successful. Large pharma companies rely on a few blockbuster products for their profits and they milk them dry. This is standard corporate greed/behavior, but it certainly seems offputting because we're dealing with peoples lives. Personally, I think its inevitable that there is going to be some form of nationalization for a protected class of life-saving medication.

https://www.labiotech.eu/trends-news/clinical-trials-success...

[jorams]

> R&D is one thing, but most drugs fail at the clinical trial stage. This money (hundreds of millions per drug) is just gone, unlike R&D which might result in new tech or at least a patent.

Are you saying the clinical trial stage is somehow not part of R&D spending? It sounds like quite obviously research to me, but I'm not familiar with how it's actually reported.

[lawlessone]

>This money (hundreds of millions per drug) is just gone,

Is it completely wasted? we learn something doesn't work. It's not fantastic like it would be to find drugs that cure things , but we still learn.

[pompino]

The industry may learn from failures, but the shareholders of private companies want a return on their investment. I sure as heck don't want my 401k tied to oncology.

[Aerroon]

>Personally, I think its inevitable that there is going to be some form of nationalization for a protected class of life-saving medication.

Wouldn't it make sense for governments to just run their own drug manufacturing company? All the drugs from expired parents are free game.

[coretx]

The WTO/TRIPS treaty already allows for governments to issue compulsory licenses in case of a national emergency. This also explains why some firms where so "nice" during the pandemic, as they feared it. See https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/trips_e/public_health_f... for details. Obviously, it does not suffice but at least it's something.

[jstanley]

It might do if they had a chance of running them efficiently.

[brobdingnag_pp]

And now it would be a political issue which drugs get manufactured for cheap and for whom. You can probably see how that would go in corrupted countries (i.e. all of them)

[tomrod]

I might be mistaken, but don't c-corporations split out R&D (money invested back into the company) from profit?

I'll admit I'm not as well read on the day-to-day reporting as I'd like to be.

[mikeyouse]

Profit is what is left over after R&D - they can choose to invest those profits into future R&D, or far more frequently, just pay out the profits to owners as share buybacks or dividends.

[lokar]

Much of the early development of novel new treatments is funded by venture capital and early IPOs. The big players buy them out when most of the risk is gone and it’s time to scale up.