<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>whimsicalism</author><text>And that’s just because we have a clear comparison point for how much these drugs cost before the FDA intervention.&lt;p&gt;For the other drugs, we have no clue how much FDA rules are raising the prices by. That’s scary.</text><parent_chain><item><author>lotsofpulp</author><text>The government admitted it too:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.hhs.gov&amp;#x2F;sites&amp;#x2F;default&amp;#x2F;files&amp;#x2F;covid-19-unapproved-drugs-initiative.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.hhs.gov&amp;#x2F;sites&amp;#x2F;default&amp;#x2F;files&amp;#x2F;covid-19-unapproved-...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;The root problem is US taxpayers should be directly paying for these studies to prove and disprove medicines, but apparently, the budget for that is not politically possible, and instead we have politicians giving away monopoly rights so the burden of the study will fall mostly on afflicted people who need the medicine.&lt;p&gt;It is crazy how there is so much crowing about high medicine prices, when the US already has world class research in the form of higher education facilities, and it could just officially research and develop medicines and put them in the public domain.</text></item><item><author>MilStdJunkie</author><text>I remember in the early aughts I could get a bottle of Colchicine for four bucks. Thanks to that walleyed expression of human avarice, the 2006 United States Unapproved Drugs Initiative, it became someone&amp;#x27;s IP and - presto! - went to sixty bucks. So, well, sorry, guess you just gotta grunt your way through a crippling weeklong gout attack. Thanks a bundle. Lord knows, it&amp;#x27;s good to be made safe from a pharmaceutical invented three thousand years ago from a goddamn flower.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>If you have first-hand knowledge of the FDA’s torpor, get in touch</title><url>https://jakeseliger.com/2023/08/02/if-youre-involved-in-drug-development-and-have-first-hand-knowledge-of-the-fdas-torpor-get-in-touch/</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>jonhohle</author><text>Not politically possible == pharma has plenty of money to line politician’s pockets and poor college students do not</text><parent_chain><item><author>lotsofpulp</author><text>The government admitted it too:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.hhs.gov&amp;#x2F;sites&amp;#x2F;default&amp;#x2F;files&amp;#x2F;covid-19-unapproved-drugs-initiative.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.hhs.gov&amp;#x2F;sites&amp;#x2F;default&amp;#x2F;files&amp;#x2F;covid-19-unapproved-...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;The root problem is US taxpayers should be directly paying for these studies to prove and disprove medicines, but apparently, the budget for that is not politically possible, and instead we have politicians giving away monopoly rights so the burden of the study will fall mostly on afflicted people who need the medicine.&lt;p&gt;It is crazy how there is so much crowing about high medicine prices, when the US already has world class research in the form of higher education facilities, and it could just officially research and develop medicines and put them in the public domain.</text></item><item><author>MilStdJunkie</author><text>I remember in the early aughts I could get a bottle of Colchicine for four bucks. Thanks to that walleyed expression of human avarice, the 2006 United States Unapproved Drugs Initiative, it became someone&amp;#x27;s IP and - presto! - went to sixty bucks. So, well, sorry, guess you just gotta grunt your way through a crippling weeklong gout attack. Thanks a bundle. Lord knows, it&amp;#x27;s good to be made safe from a pharmaceutical invented three thousand years ago from a goddamn flower.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>If you have first-hand knowledge of the FDA’s torpor, get in touch</title><url>https://jakeseliger.com/2023/08/02/if-youre-involved-in-drug-development-and-have-first-hand-knowledge-of-the-fdas-torpor-get-in-touch/</url></story>