Wait a sec, Gilead made $12.5B in 2015, $4B this year, on a single drug, and that's not enough? Gosh, I remember when $16.5B was a lot of money.
Goldman Sachs questions whether curing patients is a sustainable business model
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Re: Goldman Sachs questions whether curing patients is a sustainable business model
#22Wait a sec, Gilead made $12.5B in 2015, $4B this year, on a single drug, and that's not enough ? Gosh, I remember when $16.5B was a lot of money.
Welcome to capitalism, where its never enough to please shareholders and we require unlimited growth on a limited world.
Re: Goldman Sachs questions whether curing patients is a sustainable business model
#23I think perhaps this article's headline is a bit click-baity and it riles up people. Understandable. I also felt this way.
But then I read further. The report cited in the article suggests that companies should focus on treatments for things like common cancers, which has a renewable pool of patients. It also suggests diversifying the portfolio of cures.
It does not say companies should not bother with curing Hep C like illnesses since there's no money in it.
Re: Goldman Sachs questions whether curing patients is a sustainable business model
#24The 'ideal' drug from a business point of view not only not cures the patient long term, it offer a short term mitigation while increasing the risk on relapse and thus future recurring consumption of the treatment. At the same time it can be IP protected to block alternatives and has an insured third party collective payment coverage to guard against the treated running out of funds to afford the perpetual dependency.
This realization goes beyond medicine, and is key to understanding why we live in an 'economy' that produces masses of landfill junk while our technology and manufacturing processes keep on improving.
Re: Goldman Sachs questions whether curing patients is a sustainable business model
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
That assumes monopoly. Competition should solve that.
Remembering basic human moral values might help as well.
I don't develop cures for diseases at all. Is this moral?
If I may go out on a limb and speculate, you don't develop cures for diseases at all either. Is this moral?
If someone is going to dedicate their careers to searching for cures to diseases, but only if they can earn a competitive salary doing so, are they more or less moral than us?
For the equivalent case for investment, start with "I don't pay people to search for cures to diseases at all. Is that moral?"
Re: Goldman Sachs questions whether curing patients is a sustainable business model
#26This is one of the downsides of mobbing, shaming and regulating away outrageous prices. If pharma companies can't charge you in the ballpark of a lifetime's earnings for a one-shot, one-shots will be less compelling to them compared with treatments you have to take twice a day for the rest of your life.
Perhaps it could be regulated so that for these kind of things the price have to be proportional to the income level of the patient?
I think the market will try on its own to price discriminate if it's allowed. My wild guess is that it's illegal today.
Re: Goldman Sachs questions whether curing patients is a sustainable business model
#27Wait a sec, Gilead made $12.5B in 2015, $4B this year, on a single drug, and that's not enough ? Gosh, I remember when $16.5B was a lot of money.
Bringing new drugs to markets is expensive:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_drug_development
(These costs include the other 90% of drugs that have probably failed at some development stage)
Re: Goldman Sachs questions whether curing patients is a sustainable business model
#28This is one of the downsides of mobbing, shaming and regulating away outrageous prices. If pharma companies can't charge you in the ballpark of a lifetime's earnings for a one-shot, one-shots will be less compelling to them compared with treatments you have to take twice a day for the rest of your life.
That assumes monopoly. Competition should solve that.
The problem is that most normal market forces don't apply. Often neither the patient nor the doctor know the price of the 'product' on offer. And to the extent the doctors do know the price they have an incentive to offer the more expensive drug since they make more money that way. And since the patient is rarely paying the full cost they have no reason to price compare and will simply 'buy' what they're told is the best. In most cases Patients aren't even paying for their insurance (to a first approximation) so they don't even have a secondary intensive to keep their premiums low.
Finally people are really bad and uncomfortable with putting a price on human life. I feel perfectly comfortable weighing the pros and cons of different cars or laptops at different prices, and perfectly happy to walk away if I can't find anything I like at a price I want to pay. I have no idea how I would react to having to put a price on how much I'd be willing to pay for a 70% chance to keep my daughter alive for another 2-4 years. But I suspect if forced to decide I would give the highly irrational answer "everything I own plus everything I can borrow", and all the companies in the field are completely aware of this fact
Re: Goldman Sachs questions whether curing patients is a sustainable business model
#29This is one of the downsides of mobbing, shaming and regulating away outrageous prices. If pharma companies can't charge you in the ballpark of a lifetime's earnings for a one-shot, one-shots will be less compelling to them compared with treatments you have to take twice a day for the rest of your life.
That assumes monopoly. Competition should solve that.
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Re: Goldman Sachs questions whether curing patients is a sustainable business model
#30Thats why "we the people" need to have large part in developing new drugs and the care of people, this is nothing that can be left to the "market" in some hope that it will "work out".
Good idea, but it takes a lot of cash.
Depends what you mean. 'Cash' as in a 'fiduciary currency' is just a relative prioritization mechanism. 'We the People' should never be able to run out of 'cash' as we ca always just print more. In fact, 'we' have been doing this perpetually at high volume for some time. It is just that 'we' seem to prefer giving it away to select shareholders rather than to fund public beneficial goods or research.