today touting the Biden administration's creation of ARPA-H. This is the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Health, a DARPA-type agency explicitly designed to promote the development of health-related innovations, like vaccines, drugs, and medical equipment.
"The government could identify, say, 12 conditions that it wants to see a drug developed for. The first group to develop and prove out such a drug would get a princely sum — $100 million, or $500 million, or a billion dollars, depending on the condition and the efficacy. In return, that drug would be immediately off-patent, available for any generic drug producer to manufacture for a pittance .
For folks who may have forgotten, we paid Moderna $450 million to develop its coronavirus vaccine. We then paid it another $450 million to cover the cost of the phase 3 testing needed for FDA approval. We then allowed it to claim intellectual property in the vaccine, which meant tens of billions of dollars in revenue. It also led to the creation of at leastIt really shouldn't sound too radical to say that companies only get paid once for their work.