(08-21-2019, 04:25 PM)jagibelieve Wrote:

(08-21-2019, 02:02 PM)mikesez Wrote: How is awarding a cash prize to a company that develops a new drug different from awarding a contract to a company that's doing any other kind of work for the government? Like building new barracks or new post offices or new roads or new airplanes?
Here is the work the government wants to see done.
Do the work.
Collect the money.
Where is the difference?

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.

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