Senator Sanders Introduces Medical Innovation Prize Bills

For those who recognize the very significant problems associated with pharmaceutical patents, one popular alternative is to set up an innovation prize system, where the government sets aside large sums of cash as a reward for those who create a drug-based cure for certain issues. Senator Bernie Saners has now introduced two bills that would create potentially giant funds for such efforts -- one directed just at AIDS/HIV and one at much wider medical innovation. The bigger bill would set aside .55 percent of US GDP, or more than $80 billion per year right now. That's a pretty big chunk 'o change. The important parts are that it would also set aside at least 5% of the money to go to "open source" medical innovation efforts, which could mean about $4 billion going into open source research. 

 

Of course, this isn't the first time Senator Sanders has suggested such a thing. Four years ago, he introduced a similar effort. As we noted at the time, there's almost no chance that this goes anywhere, because it's a plan that's simply too radical and would upset way too many special interests. That said, while I do think that this would definitely be significantly better than what we have now, I'm not at all convinced it's a good plan overall.