The US will pay Moderna $176 million to develop an mRNA pandemic bird flu vaccine
The U.S. government will pay the vaccine maker Moderna $176 million to accelerate development of a pandemic influenza vaccine.
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If we were a reasonable country, we'd have a research arm of the FDA that was employing scientists/chemists to develop drugs for the most basic health needs of its citizens and dispensing them at cost to keep drugs affordable but developing cures versus disease maintenance drugs. It was something that Elizabeth Warren proposed in 2016 that was absolutely the right thing to run on.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/chinese-scientists-cure-diabetes-using-205304771.html
But we live in a hellish American landscape where our government does absolutely the bare minimum amount of support for those in need. And does so begrudgingly.
For vaccines, we shouldn't even be dispensing them at cost. Vaccinations are the second most cost effective public health intervention ever, beaten only by clean drinking water.
In purely financial terms, the cost of vaccinations are lower than the average cost to the US tax payer of someone getting sick. The public service of people not getting sick is a nice bonus. As is reducing the chances of this becoming another Covid style economic catastrophe (plus, again, the public service of protecting your citizens)
If between two variants in a decision there's a huge difference in incomes for someone, that someone will find a way to make the deciding party interested in that difference.
Which is why good guys should introduce good things slowly and carefully, the way bad guys introduce bad things (unless they are too powerful to care).
"Small government" in a nutshell
I am not sure you are aware of the immense costs to develop new drugs for diseases. At least that's what your comment sounds like, making new drugs. To do that as a state entity is completely unrealistic as it would take a massive investment from the government. Most drugs developed also fail at some stage of the process, meaning you lost all that money and work on it.
Now, if you meant that the government should produce already established basic drugs that are known to work, sell those at cost, yes, that would be a very sensible approach.
The US spent 31.6 billion to develop, produce and purchase covid 19 mrna vaccines.
So the US is already spending a ton of money....
Yeah, how many different vaccines was that? Now multiply by however many different diseases you want to cure and take into account that some diseases require medicines to be tested in very lengthy clinical trials.
That is still a huge step up from the 31.6 billion you quote.
I am not sure it needs to be if the foundation is Mrna vaccines. At least that's the idea anyway.
I was just pointing out how much the government spent and, it was quite a lot.
Yeah I get what you are saying, you are not wrong. But I have replied to a different person who said this specifically:
we'd have a research arm of the FDA that was employing scientists/chemists to develop drugs for the most basic health needs of its citizens and dispensing them at cost to keep drugs affordable but developing cures versus disease maintenance drugs
That is not just vaccines for me. All vaccines are drugs but not all drugs are vaccines.
And that is surely way to much to handle for the government. There isn't even a single large pharma company that does all that.