An anarchist takes on Big Pharma by teaching patients to make their own meds • Hacker News Board

Re: An anarchist takes on Big Pharma by teaching patients to make their own meds

#251

Post by Mz » Sat, Oct 14, 2017, 5:41 PM UTC

jaggederest wrote: post #244

Mz wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm trying to figure out what anyone can do to prevent it and thus far I am at a loss. You quietly find another path and make these insanely expensive drugs vastly less relevant. The real challenge is effectively spreading the word. Something truly disruptive in this area seems to be about the most offensive thing a human being can do.

The funny thing is that pharmaceuticals are simply one of a number of unconscionable negative-sum-games that are being played these days. I just don't understand how people can make such a blatantly destructive set of choices when it's really clear that it will come back and bite them in a way even the most psychopathically mercenary people should understand, let alone anyone with a more advanced morality than "I got…

Currently, the world actively makes it hard to make any other choice. I have made other choices. Part of the result:

I spent ~5.7 years homeless while classist assholes (online and off) shit all over me.

I believe part of this is happenstance. Humans are little monkeys with brains designed to parse a social order for a tribe of 150 members. With 7 billion people on the planet and a global economy by necessity, the paradigms developed to parse our tribe break in the face of a sudden new world order.

It is actively dangerous to give a damn about the welfare of other people. Some of that is also happenstance. Strangers from extremely different backgrounds face substantial obstacles to good communication.

But, we really need to solve this, even if we are all cold hearted sociopaths who don't give a damn about anyone but ourselves. Like you said: If we don't, this will eventually go very bad places.

Given the recent mass shooting in Las Vegas, the record destruction of hurricanes in Texas and Florida, and the ongoing fires in California, I think it is reasonable to assert that our choices are already coming back to bite us. We can do something more sensible or continue to suffer the consequences.

Re: An anarchist takes on Big Pharma by teaching patients to make their own meds

#252

Post by hacking_again » Sat, Oct 14, 2017, 5:42 PM UTC

tormeh wrote: post #250

alexanderstears wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go try to wrestle a caveman for his fur pelt and see if he considers it to be a protected object. Force protects the object, sometimes the government exerts the force sometimes not.

>Go try to wrestle a caveman for his fur pelt and see if he considers it to be a protected object. But if I show up with a better club then all his stuff is now mine. A third party enforcing certain resource allocations with overwhelming force is different to everyone defending their own stuff. Government is the difference between property rights and might-makes-right.

In theory yes, if you have an impartial third-party monopoly, but in practice it's still might-makes-right, where might = money, lawyers, political connections, ethnicity, etc. It's probably still better, but it's less transparently obvious what's going than with my club vs. yours.

Re: An anarchist takes on Big Pharma by teaching patients to make their own meds

#253

Post by candiodari » Sat, Oct 14, 2017, 6:03 PM UTC

alexanderstears wrote: post #216

dv_dt wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The mandate that emergency rooms treat anyone who enters is onerous and there's no free lunch, paying customers are stuck with the bill. I don't think that's onerous, I think that is a minimal, and admittedly imperfect, expression of our societal intent that people shouldn't die unnecessarily in emergency rooms - either from lack of being able to pay; nor from a practical standpoint, lack or delay of on-hand proof…

I don't defend the status quo. I think this is the right way to resolve healthcare. I agree with about 95% of this: https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=231949 We just need smarter regulations: > every medical facility needs to have a price for each billing code > every healthcare facility has to publish their prices > heatlh care facilities must honor their published prices for everyone > if someone needs car and…

Have you seen healthcare regulations ? The lengths hospitals and drug makers have to go through to prevent ANY mistakes are simply not reasonable.

That's not 1/1000. Not 1/1000000. Not 1/1000000000. Zero. Entire companies get shut down because of a single mistake. Think about how ridiculous that is. A company owns 5 separate factories, and in one of them a product was produced that may, in a panel of doctor's opinions, have caused the death of a patient (mostly one who would have died without the medicine), and all 5 are immediately shut down until an extensive investigation is not just run, but run in an approved manner by outside experts, and the resulting cause was both found, approved by the panel of doctors and the government.

And of course, a company is supposed to take care of any patient they damaged, for life, full treatment for all ailments (not just the one that had something to do with what they did), ...

We used to let people prepare medicines in corner shops with at least a few ingredients they procured themselves. Needless to say, pretty cheap. Mistakes were ... not common, but certainly more so than today.

Until we find a balance between care provided and acceptable risk there will be no reasonably priced healthcare. Until we stop giving health at any cost, and count on "management" mistakes to do cost saving (regulating that people get thrown out of hospital the day after open heart surgery unless there are complications. Well, if you want to survive, you bloody well hope your doctor finds some complication. Needless to say, proposals for making it same day are on the table. Good luck).

And of course, like good capitalists faced with demands like this, companies don't say "are you bloody insane ? This will bankrupt the entire country", they say "How secure do you want it to be ? Perhaps even a bit more ? I mean we can always do better. That'll be $xxx(xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx)".

Re: An anarchist takes on Big Pharma by teaching patients to make their own meds

#254

Post by candiodari » Sat, Oct 14, 2017, 6:05 PM UTC

alexanderstears wrote: post #229

dv_dt wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Healthcare often isn't billable in consistent units. Someone goes in for surgery, and they get opened up, despite pre-imaging, there are complex things that can go wrong and instead of a 1 hr 10k effort, you need to put in a 6 hours 100k effort? how is that billed? are you going to require statistics of probabily of going wrong too? By the time you get all these 'consistent billing units' figured out for all the mult…

how is it billed? Go ask the people who get jobs as billers - most hosptials have more billers than beds, they can sort it out. Before you go to surgery agree on the price of everything and ask for a video so you can verify the work was done as billed and there wasn't any padding. In an emergency situation, you're entitled to the price they advertise. IF you can't afford it, the government picks up the bill and maybe…

And what about patients who can't pay ? Whom, therefore the government can't make pay either ?

Secondly, what about people who become destitute because of a medical procedure and do what they sometimes do in Holland ? (if you're fucked on bills and the state comes after you and you would become homeless, simply rob places until you get convicted for 10 years, and stay in prison for 10 years. Free tv and internet, and nobody garnishes any wages. Outside you wouldn't be able to pay rent).

Re: An anarchist takes on Big Pharma by teaching patients to make their own meds

#255

Post by Frondo » Sat, Oct 14, 2017, 6:20 PM UTC

alexanderstears wrote: post #229

dv_dt wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Healthcare often isn't billable in consistent units. Someone goes in for surgery, and they get opened up, despite pre-imaging, there are complex things that can go wrong and instead of a 1 hr 10k effort, you need to put in a 6 hours 100k effort? how is that billed? are you going to require statistics of probabily of going wrong too? By the time you get all these 'consistent billing units' figured out for all the mult…

how is it billed? Go ask the people who get jobs as billers - most hosptials have more billers than beds, they can sort it out. Before you go to surgery agree on the price of everything and ask for a video so you can verify the work was done as billed and there wasn't any padding. In an emergency situation, you're entitled to the price they advertise. IF you can't afford it, the government picks up the bill and maybe…

That is ridiculous on so many levels.

Several years ago, I had my gallbladder out in an emergency surgery. I was in intense, intense pain. My friends worried I was having a heart attack. They drove me to the hospital, because I could barely stand, let alone drive. Such intense pain I was barely conscious.

In the ER, I remember they did an ultrasound to determine it was my gallbladder, and then pumped me so full of morphine I was fully incoherent. Still in agonizing pain.

Then, a few hours later, they cut me open and pulled it out. It was starting to go necrotic. They said, had I waited a week, I simply would have died of blood poisoning.

At no point was I in any condition to agree to a price on anything--incoherent from pain, and the morphine. I was in no position to shop around. My friends didn't even know what was wrong with me, they just drove me to the ER because we all thought I was dying.

Even if I had been able to agree to anything--which I couldn't, due to pain--having a video recording of the surgery would have done absolutely nothing for me.

Oh, and while I was in the ER, I did see a couple of gunshot victims--fully unconscious--wheeled through from ambulances. What are they agreeing to??

Man, I don't think you've ever really experienced the health system, and I don't think you've thought about your plan.

(Sadly, I also don't think people's real experiences are going to change your mind, either, but it'd be great if you did think about how nonsensical that fix you're proposing is.)

Re: An anarchist takes on Big Pharma by teaching patients to make their own meds

#256

Post by quickben » Sat, Oct 14, 2017, 6:52 PM UTC

If a person doesn't have access to medicine and dies:

- in the East, that's a victim of Communism. - in the West, that's a poor lazy bum.

In both cases, the person is gone and the society failed him.

So, this guy rebels. Let's not paint him in political colors.

Re: An anarchist takes on Big Pharma by teaching patients to make their own meds

#257

Post by kazinator » Sat, Oct 14, 2017, 10:28 PM UTC

belorn wrote: post #228

kazinator wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Developing drugs is very expensive. It takes years of research, most of which fails. I.e. out of the various molecules being researched, only few actually make it through all the trials and approval and get to market. Due to the risk, investors are looking for high returns from successful drugs.

Due to that risk, the wast majority of base research aren't funded by investors. NiH funding for medical research is the single biggest researcher in the world, with a annual research budget of $26.4 billion. All that is paid double by the citizens, first through taxes and then again through insurance/drug cost. Now imagine if we had a regulation that both forbade universities from issuing patents and limited the pri…

Would we also have to refer to the periodic table of the element's as "Mendeleev's Table", or could we not emulate the USSR to such details?

Re: An anarchist takes on Big Pharma by teaching patients to make their own meds

#258

Post by hansthehorse » Sun, Oct 15, 2017, 2:02 AM UTC

alexanderstears wrote: post #109

Sangermaine wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Long term don't these companies think that charging outrageous prices for drugs will cause a future voter/government backlash of some sort No, because it demonstrably won't. People say they're angry and then do nothing about it. The US has an entire political party angrily decrying any effort to regulate healthcare as socialist slavery. The drug companies know they'll be just fine. Maybe some token slaps on the wris…

the US has an entire political party angrily decrying any effort to regulate healthcare as socialist slavery. Argubly regulation is the problem we're in this mess. Do you think an epipen would cost $600 if there weren't a Government granted monopoly? We have two parties who love the current amount of regulations on competition - you need to go to an AMA approved medical school to become a doctor, there aren't H1Bs fo…

The epipen delivery system and the Epinephrine inside of it should be sold at cost. Both were developed by the US Military (taxpayers) and American taxpayers should own it.

Re: An anarchist takes on Big Pharma by teaching patients to make their own meds

#259

Post by hansthehorse » Sun, Oct 15, 2017, 2:12 AM UTC

djhworld wrote: post #96

knieveltech wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You want pharma companies to keep doing drug discovery why not ban outright any kind of marketing or advertising for their products? R&D spend across the industry is a fraction of the marketing spend. Think of all the good research that money would fund once pharma companies were freed from spending it on advertising.

Whenever I visit the US I find it insane how much advertising for drugs is shown on TV, with the usual "ask your doctor about..." disclaimer at the end. Why aren't more American's up in arms about this?

Only two countries allow direct-to-consumer prescription drug advertising -- New Zealand and the USA.

Re: An anarchist takes on Big Pharma by teaching patients to make their own meds

#260

Post by alexanderstears » Sun, Oct 15, 2017, 3:08 AM UTC

candiodari wrote: post #254

alexanderstears wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how is it billed? Go ask the people who get jobs as billers - most hosptials have more billers than beds, they can sort it out. Before you go to surgery agree on the price of everything and ask for a video so you can verify the work was done as billed and there wasn't any padding. In an emergency situation, you're entitled to the price they advertise. IF you can't afford it, the government picks up the bill and maybe…

And what about patients who can't pay ? Whom, therefore the government can't make pay either ? Secondly, what about people who become destitute because of a medical procedure and do what they sometimes do in Holland ? (if you're fucked on bills and the state comes after you and you would become homeless, simply rob places until you get convicted for 10 years, and stay in prison for 10 years. Free tv and internet, and…

Then they get healthcare at no cost to them - like they already do.