- Expanded arsenal of available medicines. See more
Innovators are currently rewarded for developing only those drugs for which there is substantial market demand from affluent patients. Valuing the survival and health of all human beings equally, the Health Impact Fund would offer attractive rewards for supplying important new drugs even if these meet needs of mostly poor patients.
- Cutting-edge pharmaceuticals at affordable prices. See more
The current system makes pharmaceutical innovators earn all their profits from markups. The Health Impact Fund would offer them the additional option of marketing some new drugs whose profits derive exclusively from achieving health gains. Registered for health impact rewards, such drugs would have to be sold without any markups - at no more than the cost of manufacture and distribution - in all contributing and in all low/lower-middle income countries.
- Greater chance that patients will be given the medicines that are best for them. See more
Think of a medicine that is mass-produced for $20 and sold for $50,000. Such exorbitant markups are common in the current system, where firms must rely on markups to cover their large up-front costs for research and development. Such huge markups give patent holders extremely powerful incentives to promote sales. These incentives lead to myriad abuses that are hard to stamp out; and many patients therefore do not get the treatment that is best for them. With health impact rewards, by contrast, profits are tied to therapeutic success; so firms earn nothing from getting their product prescribed to patients who do not benefit from it.