HJAR May/Jun 2026

DIALOGUE 12 MAY / JUN 2026 I  HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF ARKANSAS pharmaceutical company’s invested tens of billions of dollars in semaglutide, mak- ing drugs, research, and then you say, “Okay. We’re going to confiscate that and we’re going to make them ourselves.”Well, I think you’d run into — Editor Well, I don’t think you’d do that. I think the NIH funding that we paid, we would take those ideas and develop those. Carville The what? Editor The NIHmoney that we use for those early processes — that’s what you talked about. You said we spend the money to do the early development and then we hand it off and they take it to market. Carville You’d have to look how much of drug development comes fromNIH grants. But to me, the biggest public health set- back — the greatest [advancement] in public health, bar none, you can put them all together — are vaccines. And now we have less confidence in the greatest public health intervention in the history of the world. I mean, think of that. Editor That’s been a frustration for many providers. Carville It’s utterly insane. When I taught at college, I would have a pediatrician come to my class and scream at my students “When you have kids, get them vaccinated.” That was pre-COVID. It’s just stunning that the Secretary of Health and Human Services is “a vaccine skeptic.”Oh, Jesus. If I see some- body offering a vaccine, I just get it. I ain’t going to ask what it’s for. Just vaccinate me. Editor I think many people feel that way. But back to your question on the govern- ment . . . couldn’t they develop the generic drugs that we all know? Carville Look, it’s humongously difficult public policy and the drug patent lasts — I don’t know — seven years or some set time — and they exploit the hell out of that. And pharma says, “We got to have exclusivity because if we don’t have that, if anybody can replicate it, our research is no good.” And to tell you the truth, it kind of makes sense. Editor It does, but they do become generic at some point. Carville At some point, but then they still make money on generic drugs. And if the government started giving away losartan or a blood pressure medication that a lot of people take — I don’t know the exact patent on that — [it] has probably been around for a while — but some of these diabetes medications, hugely prescribed — but it sounds good on paper, but it’s highly unlikely to get done.