Goldman Sachs report: "Is curing patients a sustainable business model?"

[roomwithaview]

@Glaurung

financial institutions need to be neutered, probably nationalized and turned into utilities

This alone would solve much of the world’s woes!

[docosc]

I am a pediatrician. My daughter goes to school in NYC. She met a friend whose mother works in finance, owns a house in the Hamptons and bought her a Jag to drive at college. So she called and asked how it could be that somebody who just moves money around could make so much more money than a doctor, a teacher or a musician. It seemed to her that someone who actually contributed to society should do better than a parasite who just sucked off of others’ production. I had no answer.

[roomwithaview]

@NickyG

Or do research into drugs that give us super powers!

Ironically, that’s not far off of the truth, gene editing has so much more potential than just curing diseases, but this report doesn’t seem to even conceive of a shifting business model.

[roomwithaview]

@AnthonyC

If there were 100 drug companies, and 99 made treatments for a chronic disease, and 1 made a permanent cure for it, then the 99 get nothing and only the cure makes money in the market once it is in widespread use… total spending on medical care goes way down because we aren’t managing so many chronic conditions freeing up resources for other priorities.

Except Goldman Sachs has controlling interest in all 100, so no way in hell will they follow that model!

[themadpoet]

@tlwest

We can all acknowledging the good of our preferred policies. But it’s the ability to clearly acknowledge the cost that makes us adults.

Ugh - this is the essence of what is wrong with politics today.

[themadpoet]

@dommerdoodle

You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something – there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help.

I know a guy made over 6 figures without a high school diploma - not even a GED. He got the GED after several years at that salary. He has never made less than 6 figures for the last 20 years I’ve known him - changed jobs a few times.

Once you get over 6 figures - you join a ‘club’ - it lets you slip into another job in that bracket - I’m not saying people can’t fall from grace, but you better believe that getting the damn job was a fluke - I don’t know what bullshit he said to get hired - but it was right place/right time really. Previous jobs were all crap work for him - so it’s not like it was work history.

I also know someone with two masters degrees that does marine biology and has done work as a professor, as well as important work preserving the wetlands in Florida. They don’t even come close to what jackoff no high school made.

Luck. Or birth. Profits from companies are also absurd - higher than ever, and ‘paying people costs too much’ - really?

[NickyG]

Most people lack imagination, I’ve noticed…

[Urbanacus]

@bobzwrz

Why do you think that Bill Gates (for example) funds, with huge sums of money, a charitable foundation to give something (quite a lot) back?

Why doesn’t he just write a check to the US Government and let them decide how best to spend it?

Because our current government would simply give that to another billionaire in a tax cut.

@docosc

she called and asked how it could be that somebody who just moves money around could make so much more money than a doctor, a teacher or a musician. It seemed to her that someone who actually contributed to society should do better than a parasite who just sucked off of others’ production. I had no answer.

We have let these parasites walk off with 20% of our economy simply because they decided they should have it and bought politicians to make it so. Basic banking is a societal good, I have achieved economic security by borrowing to buy real estate. That was the savings-and-loan model. What we have now is the “corporation as sociopath” rape and pillage model.

[MaiqTheLiar]

@themadpoet

Once you get over 6 figures - you join a ‘club’

I’m about to be that guy; if you happen to be a man.
I could add more qualifiers but everyone knows what they are already.

[moortaktheundea]

But in the current race for the bottom the most disadvantaged end up having to underbid to such an extent that it exacerbates the inequalities. Cleveland and Detroit have offered sweet deals for ages just in hopes of being able to tax some ancillary benefits. At least some type of incentive truce would introduce a cost for a company relocating.

[sarc]

what is a patient not just mad

[Giacamo]

As of 1980’s Bayh-Dole Act, Universities have been allowed to patent their creations, even if they were funded by the government (the public). It’s a part of a long running ‘policy paradox’ wherein the healthcare industry is continuously subsidized, but not in such a way that grants the public any kind of pricing control.

[DukeTrout]

@Glaurung

what if governments agreed to reimburse drug companies for their research

Most of the best research is already done by university or government research. Then it gets handed over to pharma as grist for the profit mill.

[Wanderfound]

@Glaurung

I know it’s commie hippie talk, but what if governments agreed to reimburse drug companies for their research costs, in exchange for the companies selling the drugs in question at 10% (or 20%, whatever) above cost?

Nah, commie hippy talk is “nationalise the fuckers”.

Attempting to solve the problem by directing public funds to private corporations is more of a liberal approach.

For something in between, try “vigorously regulate drug pricing and force the pharmacorps to pay for the publicly-funded research that they profit from”.

[Wanderfound]

@docosc

So she called and asked how it could be that somebody who just moves money around could make so much more money than a doctor, a teacher or a musician. It seemed to her that someone who actually contributed to society should do better than a parasite who just sucked off of others’ production. I had no answer.

[LutherBlisset]

I pondered this, and give reverence for the reference. Now, please, take some of these blue dried frog pills, will you?

[LutherBlisset]

@lumbercartel

one of our biology professors (Etscorn) invented the nicotine patch

Interesting, he seems not to be the first to have invented it, but the first to file a patent.

Nicotine patch

And this is what is wrong with all the capitalist bullshit of “incentives”, IMO. You just set stronger incentives for playing the system. And don’t get me started on “competition” and the academic system.
Shit science, that’s one result.

Fuck yeah botany, BTW.

[Bernel]

@Glaurung

what if governments agreed to reimburse drug companies for their research costs, in exchange for the companies selling the drugs in question at 10% (or 20%, whatever) above cost?

I think governments should pool resources and buy patents to put them in the public domain. The inventors get cash up front so they can start new research, and manufacture by multiple companies ensure that the medicine will be cheap so that as many people as possible can benefit from it.

[tsath]

And change patent law radically. Currently, when rights to a drug are sold the patent clock resets which means it never expires.

[FGD135]

Curing patients should not be a business model in the first place.