Medicine for All: The Case for a Public Option in the Pharmaceutical Industry

Though the United States has a large and highly developed pharmaceutical industry, it operates on an extractive model that contributes to inequality and increasingly produces drug shortages, inefficiency, lagging innovation, misinformation and misuse of medications, and the world’s highest drug prices. These poor outcomes are the natural consequence of an industry oriented around the goal of maximizing profit above all else. This report outlines a model for a structural alternative—public ownership in the pharmaceutical sector—and offers initial considerations about the potential benefits of such a model for national health and wellbeing, the economy and democracy.