Some Republicans on the committee pushed back on Democratic criticism of pricing, arguing that pricing is what the market will bear. “In capitalism, if you’re running an enterprise where you have a fiduciary responsibility to your owners, you try and get as high a price as you can,” Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) said. “That’s what you try and do. You try and make as much profit as you can. That’s how free enterprise works. You think Chevrolet sits back and says, ‘Gosh, how can we get the price of this Chevrolet down?’ No, it’s like, ‘How high a price can I get and maximize the profit for my shareholder?’” He went on to describe price controls as “socialism lite”.
Fuck anyone actually trying to live, I suppose. People dying due to not being able to afford healthcare is what the market has no trouble bearing. All to avoid a little “socialism”.
(Whoops I meant to reply to the post, not specifically your comment).
Thank goodness for the Hippocratic origins of healthcare. Wish I could throw his words back at him so he could hear how insane it sounds in the context of healthcare. Just imagine:
You think a doctor sits back and says, ‘Gosh, how can we get the price of saving this patient’s life down?’ No, it’s like, ‘How high a price can I get and maximize the profit for my shareholder?’"
Vulture capitalism, private equity and the like is the private sector with their priorities mixed up. For it to work properly, a company needs to have a charter and follow it ahead of a profit motive.
In San Diego, big pharma is now heavily investing into AI to do a lot of the chemical compound matching that was traditionally done by people like chemists and biotech employees too.
More money for the company, less paychecks to dispense.
All true, but where is the money for university research coming from?
I mean, some of those research grants come from the same private companies. There’s value to them in using that money to train the next generation of scientists, in addition to funding basic research they can use directly.
But, admittedly I don’t claim to know how the research dollars are split between private/government/other.
I worked at a US university for 12 years, I can’t speak to what happens in Canada, but here in the US it’s definitely a mix. Student tuition is not used for research at all, at least not in any research program I’ve ever heard of.
In fact, research grants are garnished (usually to the tune of 30% or more) to pay general university expenses, and student instruction is part of that budget.
Thanks for the info. I suspect the same thing happens with Canadian universities. Almost all levels of government help fund them and would probably deduct research grants and patent fees from funding.
Here in California the big research schools make a LOT of money by licensing to private industry. There are often a number of prominent law suits over research patents with the universities and private industry. The universities very much want to keep their patents and make money from them.
Looking at the news for CRISPR tells ya a lot about how modern research works and how universities make money.
Depends on the university., but schools with big flagship research departments like Stanford and the California UC systems make a shit load of money by licensing stuff to private industry. Which is why universities like UC Berkeley are fighting legal battles over CRISPR patents - licensing that stuff is going to make the UC system a fuck load of money.
I swear I read somewhere that even when companies were at their peak of investing money into research, more than 50% of it in the US was still coming from government funding.
That’s almost certainly the case. Here’s a breakdown of funding at UCLA that shows 25% of research funding coming from non-government sources. The rest is federal, state, or other government.
Big pharma doesn’t need to do R&D because universities do it for them, then license the patents to big pharma…
https://fortune.com/2022/08/25/destroy-unique-relationship-america-universities-pharmaceutical-companies-drug-prices-research-bayh-dole-congress-howard-dean/
The same thing happens in Canada as well.
https://www.cigionline.org/articles/should-universities-get-out-patent-business/
edit – I’m not justifying this … just clarifying why it happens.
Fuck anyone actually trying to live, I suppose. People dying due to not being able to afford healthcare is what the market has no trouble bearing. All to avoid a little “socialism”.
(Whoops I meant to reply to the post, not specifically your comment).
Thank goodness for the Hippocratic origins of healthcare. Wish I could throw his words back at him so he could hear how insane it sounds in the context of healthcare. Just imagine:
Vulture capitalism, private equity and the like is the private sector with their priorities mixed up. For it to work properly, a company needs to have a charter and follow it ahead of a profit motive.
In San Diego, big pharma is now heavily investing into AI to do a lot of the chemical compound matching that was traditionally done by people like chemists and biotech employees too.
More money for the company, less paychecks to dispense.
edit links:
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/02/15/1067904/ai-automation-drug-development/
https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/life-sciences/our-insights/generative-ai-in-the-pharmaceutical-industry-moving-from-hype-to-reality
All true, but where is the money for university research coming from?
I mean, some of those research grants come from the same private companies. There’s value to them in using that money to train the next generation of scientists, in addition to funding basic research they can use directly.
But, admittedly I don’t claim to know how the research dollars are split between private/government/other.
EDIT: Here is a study from UCLA covering 2010-2015 funding that shows about 75% of funding comes from government, and 25% from private industry, charities, or other non-government sources.
The money comes from us, the taxpayers (in Canada anyway), and the students’ tuition fees.
Scientists have to be careful accepting money from companies as it could be a conflict of interest.
I worked at a US university for 12 years, I can’t speak to what happens in Canada, but here in the US it’s definitely a mix. Student tuition is not used for research at all, at least not in any research program I’ve ever heard of.
In fact, research grants are garnished (usually to the tune of 30% or more) to pay general university expenses, and student instruction is part of that budget.
Thanks for the info. I suspect the same thing happens with Canadian universities. Almost all levels of government help fund them and would probably deduct research grants and patent fees from funding.
Here in California the big research schools make a LOT of money by licensing to private industry. There are often a number of prominent law suits over research patents with the universities and private industry. The universities very much want to keep their patents and make money from them.
Looking at the news for CRISPR tells ya a lot about how modern research works and how universities make money.
Depends on the university., but schools with big flagship research departments like Stanford and the California UC systems make a shit load of money by licensing stuff to private industry. Which is why universities like UC Berkeley are fighting legal battles over CRISPR patents - licensing that stuff is going to make the UC system a fuck load of money.
I swear I read somewhere that even when companies were at their peak of investing money into research, more than 50% of it in the US was still coming from government funding.
That’s almost certainly the case. Here’s a breakdown of funding at UCLA that shows 25% of research funding coming from non-government sources. The rest is federal, state, or other government.