Is It Radical or Feasible for Drugs to Become A Global Public Good?

Abstract

This paper mainly discusses whether drugs can become the global public good. By analyzing the industry chain of pharmaceutical companies, which can understand the industrial structure and investment demand of pharmaceuticals. When drugs change from for-profit products to public goods, the overall pharmaceutical environment will be affected, and the capital investment and market environment will change. Because the production of drugs is accompanied by high production costs, it is also important to maintain the intellectual property rights of drugs, which will lead to the formation of anti-competitive temporary monopoly in the market. Such monopolies lead to excessive concentration of power and technology, so national governments intervene to maintain a competitive market environment and potentially promote some medicines as global public goods. However, there will be many problems when all drugs are called global public goods. These contents will be outlined in detail in this paper. The article concludes with the conclusion that drugs can become public goods under certain and appropriate circumstances.