Patents solve better than prizes for medical
Philip Stevens and Stephen Ezell February 3, 2020, Stevens is executive director of the Geneva Network, which he founded in 2015. He is also a senior fellow at the Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs, Malaysia; Ezell is ITIF vice president for Global Innovation Policy and focuses on science, technology, and innovation policy as well as international competitiveness and trade policy issues, “Delinkage Debunked: Why Replacing Patents With Prizes for Drug Development Won’t Work,” INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION FOUNDATION, accessed July 1, 2024, https://itif.org/publications/2020/02/03/delinkage-debunked-why-replacing-patents-prizes-drug-development-wont-work/
Such a top-down body would be open to politicization and rent seeking, and by replacing patents with prizes and other delinkage mechanisms, it would significantly weaken incentives that have been responsible for the vast panoply of medicines and treatments on which physicians and patients can draw today.