It hasn't been a free market since we created the FDA (and I'm not looking to get rid of it), and with patents and advertising law, etc, it's never going to be free.
So why don't we change the accounting? Instead of making drugs companies advertise and exploit to be able to pay the regulatory costs, and R&D, etc, why not recognize that they create drugs for us and this is our hurdle - not theirs.
We want the product, so we shouldn't dump costs on the drug companies and pretend we've dealt with them.
So we should pay for the regulatory testing. 100%.
But that leaves an inventive to push expensive and unneeded or dangerous drugs through the system because they don't pay and yet get rewarded. So we need to make these our drugs - by paying for the R&D up front, so that there's no need to game our own system.
Now there's no need for secrecy so there's no need for patents to reward letting it go, and everything gets simpler again.
When you strip the patents, the marketing, and the legal games, our drugs would get a lot cheaper and more reliable.
We'd still be paying for all, maybe even more, tests, but at least we wouldn't have to trust someone whose motive clearly (and reasonably in this system) is to rush to market.
Yes, because government agencies are well known for
- cost efficiency
- openness to exploring new avenues of research
- obeying their own regulatory regimes
It'll certainly reduce some gaming of the current system, but I can't see how this will materially improve the situation as a whole.
Also, their costs would be much lower because we'd be paying for the clinical trials and there wouldn't be marketing costs.