(08-21-2019, 04:50 PM)mikesez Wrote:

(08-21-2019, 04:25 PM)jagibelieve Wrote: A company developing a new product != government contract.

First of all that's not the way government contracts work.  In a nutshell the government creates a Statement Of Work (SOW) and opens it up for bidding.  Companies decide whether or not they want to bid on the contract based on the SOW.  Once bids are submitted they are reviewed and the contract is awarded to a company based on best technical plan/lowest cost.

Drug companies doing research and development of new drugs do so in the free market.  Government should get out of the way of that process.  The free market would be the ultimate decider of what the "cash prize" is should a drug company develop a new drug as it should be.

It's called Capitalism.

The free market would assign almost no reward without the protections of patent law.  The problem is that patent law seems to be giving to high of rewards, at too much cost to too many desperate, dying people.  

The cash prize idea would be basically the same as the statement of work you describe.  Statement of work: show that X cures Y in animal trials - get cash prize if it does.  Then get offered a new SOW - show that X cures Y in small human study - get a second cash prize if it does.  More complex than this of course, but not fundamentally different.

Sigh...  You just don't understand how government contracts work.  I do.  I have been a government contractor for the last 20 years and I can tell you that it doesn't get awarded or paid after the work is done.  That's a whole other topic.

What you are basically proposing is the government micro-managing an industry.  Again, it's not up to the government to pick winners and losers.  It's not up to the government to drive innovation.

We have gotten off-topic here and should steer back to the point of the thread... the weak bunch of loons that the democrats are fielding right now.  A few weeks ago I thought that Kamala Harris might be the new "chosen one" for the democrat party, but it looks like Pocahontas is doing very well right now.

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