The sustainability of the health system and the pharmaceutical market: A permanent interaction between the cost of medications, the patent system, and disease care

Abstract

Taking into account the latent threat of future pandemics, the objective of this study is to analyze – particularly with respect to medications – the sustainability of the health system, healthcare coverage, budgetary efficiency, and connections with the phar-maceutical patent system. In this context, the pharmaceutical patent system acts as a de-termining factor, given that promoting its existence stimulates the production of research, but in turn its existence stands in the way of rapid advancements, primarily due to the de-velopment of protective legislation concerning patents, which has largely accommodated the industry. Given that the pharmaceutical industry has managed to extend the duration of patents and avoid the incorporation of generics, our analysis focuses on the influence of pharmaceutical patents; this influence has led to reflection on the possibility of combining efforts by forging alliances between numerous companies and the public sector in order to face the challenges posed by new diseases caused by viruses that give rise to epidemics and pandemics.