Then stop subsidizing them
I don’t have a problem with subsidizing them. I have a problem with subsidizing them without requiring the money to go to things with utility like R&D and bringing down production costs. If we did that, I’d be fine with it. The U.S. has a long history of government partnering with private industry on science and engineering. The problem here is that science and engineering weren’t being paid for.
These pharma CEO, and most C-Suite officers in general make waaaay too much. That said, a good chunk of this R&D budget might be actually be obscured in acquisition and licensing expenses. It’s pretty common for companies to get so damn big that they know longer to know how to innovate or execute efficiently anymore. I feel like Adobe and Autodesk are good examples of this in type of thing in the software space. All they do is buy and license crap.
A lot of these pharma companies license stuff from the Stanfords and Cals of the world. Moreover, those schools are pretty aggressive about protecting their licenses because they make a shit load of money off of that stuff.
