Thompson notes that American scientists spend an average of 30 to 40% of their time on grant paperwork. He made the point while he and Josh Harder were discussing prior authorization in healthcare and the case for cutting bureaucracy that eats professionals' time.
…that we have to talk about a subject as electrifying as prior off? And you said, yes, Derek Thompson what we're going to talk about. So the floor is yours. Tell me everything and start simple. What is prior authorization? Why does it matter? Why isn't it working? What's the plan to make it better?
…somebody who's known for pushing the boundaries a little bit more, then that should actually go for scrutiny. But we can create some real gains here and lower the cost to our healthcare system. At the same time, we're actually getting patients what they need much faster than they're getting today.
…out paperwork, which requires something much less than a genius mind. I think that the way that we put it is like, imagine if it became, if we learned that the American academic community developed a disease such that they had a chronic fatigue disorder and had to sleep for 30% of the year. They only really woke up into April or May of any given year. What would we say about our science system? We'd say, well, God, we have to cure this disease. In this case, we made the disease. The disease is the paperwork that we're forcing these scientists to fill out. So similarly, I am a huge fan of finding ways to reduce bureaucracy that is taking incredibly special professionals, doctors and scientists, giving them back their time so they can do major work, discover cures to diseases, and actually treat patients. I think it's a really lovely idea. There's another idea. Go ahead.
The incredible part about that is not just that we're taking people who we've invested decades in their education, but that less than 10% of the grant application that they're spending so much of their time on is the actual science. The other 90% is the budget. It's about the facilities. It's…
I know you're also interested in funding research to discover alternative uses for cheap generic drugs that have already been approved. And this, I think, is a really clever idea. It's going to sound wonky, but there's real precedent for this. I believe during COVID, researchers realized that, was…
Right. This is really a hole in our patent system and the way that we incentivize drug development across the United States. And you can think about it in terms of both all of the drugs that are off patent, right? I mean, we have like quite literally thousands and thousands of drugs that maybe they…