Prizes cause rent seeking and cronyism
Philip Stevens and Stephen Ezell, 2020 - “Delinkage Debunked: Why Replacing Patents With Prizes for Drug Development Won’t Work” (ITIF, February 2020), https://itif.org/publications/2020/02/03/delinkage-debunked-why-replacing-patents-prizes-drug-development-wont-work/. //DH
Opponents of the market-based system of drug development decry funds spent by the pharmaceutical
industry on lobbying governments to ensure a favorable policy regime, such as a reasonably strong patent
system and a global trading system that respects IP rights. But a prize system would hand significant new
discretionary powers to government officials, who would be the ultimate arbiters of whether a new
medicine wins a prize. This would create major new incentives for rent seeking and crony capitalism, and
potentially result in the wholesale politicization of drug development.