I’m totally with you on that. The issue is more one of how much they should be allowed to gouge that person for saving his life, and what I’m saying is that, under the current system, we need to let them gouge people so we keep getting new drugs. I’m aware that the current system is not ideal, but changing it to avoid this would require a much more drastic change than simply keeping the basic system we have now and just saying they aren’t allowed to gouge people for life saving drugs.
I was aware of that, but it seems like it’s more fucked up than I realized. I thought it was usually just that they convinced doctors to prescribe the new delivery system, but you could make the old one. After reading it, it still seems like that’s the case, except that you can’t demonstrate equivalence between the old and new methods, and the new ones are what insurance will cover. That’s completely fucked up.
Because humanism?
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You win the internet for today.
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We need to keep bribing the job creators and medicine makers, because who would ever do those things without the appropriate motivation$?
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In fairness, Gilead will cut the price when their patent expires.
Hepatitis C has recently been called out by the CDC as a hidden epidemic which is rampant, but currently asymptomatic, in Baby Boomers. I don’t know why that is (even though I worked in Hepatitis testing for years), but the signal is clear to would-be pharma company shareholders - the largest cohort in the US is, since Aug 2012, being officially requested to get Hep C testing done.1.
Lots of people will find out they’re Hep C positive in the next couple of years. It’s a brilliant and canny move by Gilead to have a drug ready at the beginning of this mass testing, and it’ll probably save lives.
Ethically, though, I’m less happy, to put it mildly. Since it didn’t actually cost $11bn to produce the drug, there’s no fundamental reason why taxpayers and insured people should have to funnel $11bn to Gilead just because they paid that much. (New drug discovery costs are at about $1.5bn, even in pharma companies’ inflated estimates.) But not doing so would mean (Gasp!) assuming capitalism is not always the best way to apportion goods in society.
Disclaimers: (1) I’ve worked for a company that did business with Gilead and everyone I met there was quite nice. (2) My own doctor ordered a Hep C test on me last month even though I have no risk factors except for being a boomer. (It was negative.)
And thanks Deidzoeb - every day I worked with Gilead, that bible verse ran through my head, so it wasn’t like I just thought it up on the fly!
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Even if it costs a trifling fraction of the value to produce individual doses of the cure?
You’re technically right, so long as the cure is cheaper than the treatment I’m certain there will be buyers. But selling a life-saving cure at an outrageous markup for the sake of personal gain is grossly immoral.
This is like firefighters refusing to put out a burning building until the owner pays them 95% of the salvageable value of their home, or doctors refusing to administer a cure until a patient pays a sum comparable to what their life insurance would pay out if they were to die instead.
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Boomers being told to be tested and a product on the market are not remotely coincidental.
Wishing a company that paid a huge amount for a cure to provide said cure for pennies is at best naive. We don’t all get ponies and lollipops because we want them.
Firefighters in South Fulton, Tenn., have let two homes burn to the ground over the past two years since the city commission started enforcing a rule that the department serve only subscribers who pay the $75 annual fee. The city commission is expected to vote April 19 on whether to amend that policy to allow the fire department to put out all blazes and then bill nonsubscribers $3,500 for the service. Paying members wouldn’t be billed.
http://money.msn.com/insurance/will-firemen-let-your-house-burn-wsj.aspx (2012-04-18)
Which is why profit motive is the worst thing for health care. Ever.
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Yes, I’m aware. Doesn’t change the fact that it is an abomination of basic human dignity and morality.
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“First, do no harm”, didn’t test well with market demographics, so we went with “***Your money or your life!***” instead.
The shareholders are quite happy.
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Sorry if I gave you the impression I thought it was coincidental. I kind of meant the opposite.
It’s the fallacy of sunk cost, in slightly different clothing. Once you’ve recovered your costs, you’ve recovered your costs, everything after that is pure profit.
Not necessarily. Presumably they’ve taken other risks which have failed, so the successes have to make enough $$ to pay for those as well.
Not sticking up for the pharmaceutical industry in any way of course, but just noting that your point is an over simplification.
Actually, there really aren’t any major issues associated with eliminating medical patents entirely and putting healthcare research across the board back with the universities and public sector.
Okay, they’re are, but they’re insignificant compared to the savings and quality of life benefits.
Oh, also people are dying because of this bullshit. There’s also that. I think we can leverage that.
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Well technically they are legally obligated to help you - however the hospital can and will seek their payment. And if you don’t have health insurance their payment very well may be more than your life insurance.
Or you could just come out and say it:
Either the company takes you money and makes profits
OR
the government takes your money as a new tax to pay for it all.
Looks pretty much the same from where I’m sitting.
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No company bases the price of successful goods and services to compensate for failures. That would be idiotic. Think about it for half a second.
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OR we just don’t develop new drugs and you die when you get sick. So there is one more option, but you pretty much nailed it. It’s not entirely the same, though, because the way we do it now hits poor people disproportionately, but the resources for the R&D have to come from somewhere.
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