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The drug things is partially BS. The top 10 big Pharma (in random order)

GlaxoSmithKline British

Eli Lilly US

Sanofi French

AbbVie US

Roche Swiss

Pfizer US

Novartis Swiss

Merck & Co US

AstraZeneca British/Swedish

Johnson & Johnson US

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Hard to say. These are all internationalized firms with a variety of global operations centers. I know GSK does a lot of their research in North Carolina. But that is beside the key argument, which is that the US pays more (in aggregated cost and volume) to these firms, such that the total revenue for a product line during the patent lifetime justifies the cost to both bring the drug to market and pay for a variety of failures that didn't make it to market. I'm not sure if this is true, but it does seem plausible. And even if it is true, it still might be better to, say, fund more university based research instead, or have lower per-unit costs and pay innovation bounties or any number of other schemes.


Is it more than aggregate of all other markets?




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