The US Supreme Court is hearing a case about patent law’s “exhaustion doctrine”

The same thing that happens with the people whose lives could be saved right now if we stopped funding roads, or basic research, or investing in the city's water system, or educating first-graders, or researching drugs, or enforcing the property rights of rich people, or a bunch of other things that aren't going to pay off for years and are not associated with one's political party. It's not that the parties being funded are all completely honest and trustworthy, but that the money still needs to be spent. Drug research is one of the small number of things society does that actually add to the public good forever. Every year amazing drugs that do amazing things go off-patent. It's an amazing system and our children should be awed by how much stuff they will have. "Hepatitis C" will be like "polio" for them.

There is no reason to think the years 2010-2025 are some magic perfect ground where the drugs from pre-2010 are completely unsuitable and all the drugs that will be invented in year 2025 and beyond are unimportant or will still be found if a bunch of people who understand neither biochemistry nor economics rebuilt the economic system around it.

Every generation has the option to quit investing in the future. There are always people who want to stop all the painful sacrifices that are required right now, and just live off of yesterday's accumulated sacrifices and then go to sleep.

There will always be some procedure that keeps people alive but that costs Too Much Money. It's how most countries have kept their health care costs under control without noticeably impacting QALYs. There should be no doubt that there are people who died sooner because of these decisions, but the system works and doesn't bankrupt them. If "but we can't let someone die for a reason as stupid as money" is your terminal argument, be thankful you weren't in charge, or else society would have gone bankrupt a long time ago. These are hard decisions but adults need to make them, and generally adults do make them and things work out.

> When I see someone on HN talk about how "oh, it will probably be okay if we leave the market alone

I think there's a lot that can be improved about the market. I have a lot to say about that, but you are trying so hard to be cute and using children's arguments that goodwill can no longer be assumed. Good night and good luck.

The length of a drug patent is 20 years, 8 of which by your statement are spent in development. So yes, almost half the patent duration is spent with the drug off the market. This is burden almost no other industry has to deal with. My original statement is completely valid.

> Hence why I also consider opening up the drug market to other countries. If drugmakers need to make all their profit front-loaded then they can at least spread it geographically so Americans don't have to suffer under these prices.

Other countries place more stringent price ceilings on the cost of pharmaceuticals, which is why there is such a disparity between what we are paying and what others are paying. If we want to spread the cost burden geographically, countries benefiting from these products should be pressured to remove their price ceilings, which would lower costs in the US. Opening up the markets to other countries is just regulatory arbitrage, not spreading of cost burden.

Also, if I'm interpreting this correctly, nothing you posted suggests that the government is the primary backer of pharmaceutical research. We can argue over whether the research costs are 50 billion or 30 billion or whatever, but your original claim is still incorrect unless the numbers are off by literally an order of magnitude.

>The same thing that happens with the people whose lives could be saved right now if we...

I'm just looking for an answer to the question. Right now society pays for treatments that can't be afforded. Furthermore, I'm actually pro drug development when most of your response seems to think I'm not. I actually think that the current system does not support R&D like it should.

>I think there's a lot that can be improved about the market. I have a lot to say about that, but you are trying so hard to be cute and using children's arguments that goodwill can no longer be assumed. Good night and good luck.

I'm a mirror, you're glue... :P But seriously, I am citing my sources, there's even a huge post in here a bit upstream you can read with all sorts of sources debunking a couple industry claims. The point of turning your quote around is to show that those sorts of diatribes aren't particularly useful.