These drives to scale back patent protection for Covid-19 vaccines and treatments are motivated by a noble objective: to ensure that lifesaving drugs will be broadly affordable. But the unintended consequences are worrisome. The smaller the rewards for coronavirus drugs, the less that pharmaceutical businesses are likely to invest in research and development. Not only will that extend the current crisis, but it also will deter drugmakers from pursuing research directed at potential future pandemic-causing virus strains.

This doesn’t mean that governments must make a choice between ensuring patient access and encouraging drug development. With creative policymaking and political will, we can — and ought to have — both.

Governments can offer strong incentives to drugmakers while ensuring affordability by committing to patent buyouts for effective treatments. In a buyout, the government purchases the patents on a new drug — typically at a price that matches or exceeds what the patent holder otherwise would have earned — and then allows makers of generics to produce and sell low-cost versions. If, for example, clinical trials establish the efficacy of remdesivir in treating Covid-19, then the federal government should buy the U.S. rights to the drug from Gilead and give generic manufacturers free rein to ramp up production.

How much should the government pay? If remdesivir saves 10,000 American lives, then its value to our society — using traditional tools of cost-benefit analysis — would be as much as $100 billion. For a fraction of that sum, H.H.S. could buy the drug rights from Gilead and still leave the company with an eye-popping profit. Unfortunately, the $2 trillion Covid-19 stimulus package passed last month included only $11 billion that H.H.S. can use for patent buyouts, and the department will most likely need to draw down some of those funds for other purposes, like procuring diagnostic tests and purchasing other medical equipment. Mr. Azar’s department needs more money for patent buyouts.

Another time-tested tool for rewarding innovation while ensuring widespread access to new technologies is a “challenge prize.” We have proposed a prize for an effective coronavirus vaccine of $500 per vaccinated person, with the federal government footing the full bill. That almost certainly would make a Covid-19 vaccine profitable — potentially one of the most profitable drugs in history.

Patent buyouts and challenge prizes would of course add to the federal deficit — something that Representative Schakowsky, for one, said she was unwilling to do if it meant drugmakers would profit. But with Covid-19 already shutting down the economy and stealing thousands of lives, cutting costs on drugs directed at the disease is the very definition of penny-wise and pound-foolish. Worse yet, if we refuse to offer generous rewards for vaccines and treatments this time, we will find fewer pharmaceutical companies willing to invest in vaccines and treatments that address threats likely to emerge or return, such as the Zika virus, Dengue fever and new types of influenza.

None of this is to suggest that the only way to spur innovation is to dangle large payouts in the faces of pharmaceutical businesses. Reputational incentives and altruistic inclinations will lead some companies to pursue Covid-19 cures. Scientists employed by government agencies and academic institutions will make major breakthroughs too.

But to contain Covid-19 now and sustain a pipeline of drugs directed at other infections with pandemic potential, we will almost certainly need to enlist the capital and creativity of the private sector. We don’t need to compromise patient access, but we will need to promise profits to businesses that develop effective vaccines and treatments. Among all the costs that we as a society will bear because of this virus and later ones, the payout to pharmaceutical companies will be a rounding error.

Daniel Hemel is an assistant professor at the University of Chicago Law School and Lisa Larrimore Ouellette is an associate professor at Stanford Law School.

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