We could do that. On other hand, we could just pay them the expected market value of the drug when they first invent it then give it to public for almost nothing.
"You can cure cancer with those three drugs? Was going to make tens of billions? Here you go: guarantee of tens of billions of subsidies over next 20 years in exchange for the patent and license for anyone to produce it generically."
Boom! Tens of thousands of lives saved a year. Way better than investing into the TSA. :)
When you say "we pay the market value" and "give to the public for almost nothing", "we" and "the public" are the same group and therefore it makes no sense to make the distinction.
Unless by "we" you mean "the wealthy" and "the public" you mean "the poor", in which case the increased tax that has to be set up for that will just be reverted into the cost of the service/good provided by the wealthy, the wages of their employers, or turn into capital flight, and so forth. In short, you're basically taking money from other areas of people's lives and making them put it into health care. Which could be achieved by themselves by saving, if that's what they wanted to do.
I live in the U.S. if I didn't mention it. Here, we differentiate between the rights of the public as a whole and private individuals. Businesses and I.P. tend to be a form of private property. So, "we" the public can't take what "we" consider private. That's a contradiction.
In this specific case, it's the public paying money to private parties for their property to move into public hands. Then, that public property is manufactured to be distributed to the many, private parties in need that constitute the general public.
"You can cure cancer with those three drugs? Was going to make tens of billions? Here you go: guarantee of tens of billions of subsidies over next 20 years in exchange for the patent and license for anyone to produce it generically."
Boom! Tens of thousands of lives saved a year. Way better than investing into the TSA. :)