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Goldman Sachs questions whether curing patients is a sustainable business model

arstechnica.com

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Re: Goldman Sachs questions whether curing patients is a sustainable business model

#81

Post by yenwel »

xg15 wrote: post #48
cornholio wrote: post #42

Sure it is. Gilead made 100 billion dollars curring Hep-C with seed research investments that were probably much less than 1 billion. So as long as this strong differential and potential for profit exists, drug companies feel competitive pressure to produce better treatments, irrespective of the fact that "milking" the pathology would yield them trillions collectively. It's effectively a "tragedy of the commons" of s…

It would still require that the company that develops the cure could make more profit off it than it would make with chronic treatments. So if you went purely for profit, you could only develop a cure if: - you could price it higher than the price of the chronic therapy over the full lifetime of a patient. or - you could sell it to more patients than you could have sold the chronic treatment. A lot more, because ever…

On the one hand you have a company who's business model depends on milking patients on chronic treatments. On the other hand you have a company that is able to develop a permanent cures for that disease. Guess which company is a threat to which company (hint: if there are no longer sick patients to milk you no longer have a business model).

Re: Goldman Sachs questions whether curing patients is a sustainable business model

#82

Post by reificator »

PeterStuer wrote: post #38
xg15 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I'd go further and say that a system where innovation is driven by profit is good at perpetually managing problems but very bad at actually getting rid of them.

If you dig even further, you will find things like 'unhappy people consume more as they try to buy their way out of misery'. Now of course you don't directly sell unhappiness, but you can sell goods of which the consumption benefits the individual that consumes it, but deteriorates the world a little bit for everyone as a result. A car is a perfect example. Great benefit to the buyer, but through noise, pollution, ta…

I find a motorcycle with lots of storage to be a nice compromise. Cheaper and more fun too.

Of course you do need to take a safety course and be aware of the dangers, but at least people acknowledge their danger. Cars somehow get a collective free pass despite their astronomical death tally.

Re: Goldman Sachs questions whether curing patients is a sustainable business model

#83

Post by ransom1538 »

PeterStuer wrote: post #24

The '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…

Also* this 'ideal' drug has a difficult time being covered by healthcare. At all possible this drug should not cure the patient, be taken for a lifetime, not be healthcare covered [if possible], needed daily, easily marketable, be IP protected [for as long as possible] AND have the ability to survive even with generics on the market : viagra, propecia, etc.

Re: Goldman Sachs questions whether curing patients is a sustainable business model

#84

Post by llukas »

ramblerman wrote: post #78
brann0 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we agree medicine cannot be managed as a business, right? It's ok if healthcare losses money, in fact it should be ok for all public sevices to operate and not being profitable.

You are jumping from one extreme to the other. Creating a public institution with no pressure to make profit is a disaster waiting to happen. You can certainly keep a 'competitive' environment which is regulated with incentives. And I do agree healthcare needs this, and shouldn't live purely by the free market.

DARPA...

Re: Goldman Sachs questions whether curing patients is a sustainable business model

#85

Post by psergeant »

ramblerman wrote: post #78
brann0 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we agree medicine cannot be managed as a business, right? It's ok if healthcare losses money, in fact it should be ok for all public sevices to operate and not being profitable.

You are jumping from one extreme to the other. Creating a public institution with no pressure to make profit is a disaster waiting to happen. You can certainly keep a 'competitive' environment which is regulated with incentives. And I do agree healthcare needs this, and shouldn't live purely by the free market.

> Creating a public institution with no pressure to make profit is a disaster waiting to happen.

This is the model many rich country healthcare runs on, and provides measurably better outcomes for less expenditure than the US.

Re: Goldman Sachs questions whether curing patients is a sustainable business model

#86

Post by toomuchtodo »

ramblerman wrote: post #78
brann0 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we agree medicine cannot be managed as a business, right? It's ok if healthcare losses money, in fact it should be ok for all public sevices to operate and not being profitable.

You are jumping from one extreme to the other. Creating a public institution with no pressure to make profit is a disaster waiting to happen. You can certainly keep a 'competitive' environment which is regulated with incentives. And I do agree healthcare needs this, and shouldn't live purely by the free market.

You can have a competitive environment without a profit motive. You judge on results, not profitability.

Re: Goldman Sachs questions whether curing patients is a sustainable business model

#87

Post by spydum »

psergeant wrote: post #85
ramblerman wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are jumping from one extreme to the other. Creating a public institution with no pressure to make profit is a disaster waiting to happen. You can certainly keep a 'competitive' environment which is regulated with incentives. And I do agree healthcare needs this, and shouldn't live purely by the free market.

> Creating a public institution with no pressure to make profit is a disaster waiting to happen. This is the model many rich country healthcare runs on, and provides measurably better outcomes for less expenditure than the US.

I may be ignorant on this, but don't many of those countries benefit by the r&d funding happening in the US?

Re: Goldman Sachs questions whether curing patients is a sustainable business model

#88

Post by collyw »

ramblerman wrote: post #78
brann0 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we agree medicine cannot be managed as a business, right? It's ok if healthcare losses money, in fact it should be ok for all public sevices to operate and not being profitable.

You are jumping from one extreme to the other. Creating a public institution with no pressure to make profit is a disaster waiting to happen. You can certainly keep a 'competitive' environment which is regulated with incentives. And I do agree healthcare needs this, and shouldn't live purely by the free market.

Europe proves you wrong.

Re: Goldman Sachs questions whether curing patients is a sustainable business model

#89

Post by collyw »

buvanshak wrote: post #34
PeterStuer wrote: post #24

The '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…

> The 'ideal' drug from a business point of view not only not cures the patient long term... There is another one. Vaccines. Or any preventive medicines that does not actually require people to be sick. You just need to inject massive amount of fear of diseases (Statistics is your friend here) into the populace to create a nice, ever increasing demand of your produce...

Antivaccers here? I expected better, but I see you have been rightful down voted.

Re: Goldman Sachs questions whether curing patients is a sustainable business model

#90

Post by collyw »

dominotw wrote: post #59
masklinn wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is another one. Vaccines. Vaccines are absolute shit from a business perspective. They're expensive to develop, generally cheap to produce, and their administration is a single or limited event point. Sure you've got breadth but you've got no depth, once an individual is vaccinated they're done, or maybe they'll need an other round years from now. Big pharma companies absolutely hate vaccines, having people p…

> administration is a single or limited event point. What about flu vaccines? Even govt runs ads urging people to get their flu shots, even though they have been shown to be useless.

Where have they been shown to be useless?
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