Im saying that the companies who currently own the IP didn’t in fact pay for the development. They paid for the exclusive rights. Universities discovered and developed the new drugs, and then, since universities don’t run large pharmaceutical factories, they sell that developed drug to a company to manufacture it at scale in exchange for the sole rights to be the manufacturer. The system as it stands is not like taxes, because taxes are FOR something. If we stopped giving patents to Pfizer we wouldn’t stop having medicine or even stop having new medical breakthroughs, we would simply no longer have to pay $600 for a Tylenol in the hospital.

I’m glad you added that you aren’t advocating for this, but this system isn’t ingrained into society. It was created, and shaped this way by the companies which own the ip and benefit from nobody being able to manufacture their own cheaper versions. The result of dismantling the medical ip system would not result in zero medicine being manufactured it would result in hundreds of thousands of individual small pharmacies producing their own drugs for nearly no cost. The IP rights exist to protect entrenched capital at the very top of the market. This does not protect anyone but the rights holders and hurts everyone else by further increasing the barriers to access for the majority of the planet.

A billion dollar company has convinced you that if they don’t hold exclusive rights to manufacture lifesaving medications they did not develop then all of medical research would cease. That is hilariously false.