Americans don't pay twice for medicines - new research explains

Partnerships between drug manufacturers and the federal government are helping the industry move quickly to develop COVID-19 therapeutics and vaccines. That’s a good thing, according to the USA’s Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO).

However, some policymakers want the government to seize patents for drug that benefit in part from publicly-funded research, arguing that consumers pay twice for these drugs, so the government should control pricing and license the drugs to generic manufacturers.

One such example is Gilead Sciences’ (Nasdaq: GILD) remdesivir, an antiviral that has helped lower the COVID-19 death rate. While the National Institutes for Health (NIH) helped fund research on remdesivir’s efficacy, Gilead discovered and developed the drug - and expects to spend more than $1 billion on R&D and manufacturing this year alone.