Patents on drugs seem to be working rather well

We all know the spiel - but, but, the capitalists are making money out of drugs! Therefore abolish capitalism and all the rest. This always failing rather as the entire point of drug patents is to gain the private sector’s energy in creating public goods. It costs $ a billion and more to create, test and get licenced a new drug. If everyone can copy it on day one no profit can be made and therefore the $ billion and change will not be spent.

Therefore no new drugs.

It often is worth looking at a question from the other end of the societal telescope though. What do the capitalists think about this? From a stock market note on Astra Zeneca:

Rare diseases are, by definition, uncommon. In the past spending millions, perhaps billions, on researching a drug to treat a few tens of thousands of patients worldwide didn't make financial sense. Instead attention focused on treatments for common diseases, like asthma, with patients stretching into the tens of millions. As a result, only around 5% of designated rare diseases have approved treatments.

More recently that attitude has shifted. While major diseases may have large markets, they also attract lots of competition. That means individual drugs companies can end up with a relatively small slice of a large pie. Competition in rare diseases is far lower - a drug company which develops a treatment for a previously unaddressed illness will likely end up serving the entire market and can probably attach a hefty price tag to boot. It's also unlikely a competitor will develop a more effective alternative, since competition is so much lower. Increased interest in the sector means the global rare disease market is forecasted to grow by a low double-digit percentage.

The patent system is producing drugs for common conditions. It’s also producing competition for such drugs which tempers the price - and thus profits to be made - that can be charged for those more common diseases. This is pushing the capital, the effort, out into cures for less common diseases.

We appear to have a system which produces the desired end result. Those vast productive powers of the capitalist, greed incentivised, system producing more treatments for the things that ail us.

Of course, it’s entirely possible to still criticise the system. But any critique really does have to start from the observation that the current system is actually working.