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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

#191

Post by sametmax »

booleandilemma wrote: post #180
sametmax wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it's essentially eat right, drink water, get some rest, etc. Not the mumbo jumbo you see in Hollywood movie. I can't think of any scientific experiment that would conclude: burn out, eat junk and drink mostly beer.

Well it's essentially eat right, drink water, get some rest, etc. This is just healthy living. I don’t think we should ascribe it to Traditional Chinese Medicine.

You'd be surprise how much common sense people pay to hear in some different form and name. Yin/yang, ayurveda, etc. We love creating symbolism for things grandma said to their children for 1000 years.

Beside, most reason to go to the doctor go away if you have a healthy life style.

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

#192

Post by MistahKoala »

What a depressing way to spin what are otherwise reasonable questions and comments seemingly addressed by the report. Just as depressing is to see that a microbiology PhD is making her living by recycling clickbait content written by someone else (Mole's article is more or less a facsimile of the original CNBC article).

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

#193

Post by WhompingWindows »

I think there's a potential policy play in this. There is already a class of drugs, known as orphan drugs, which are targeted to rarer diseases that currently have no gold standard treatment. Companies are incentivized by the US FDA to make drugs for these conditions. Maybe the FDA could also make a policy space for "cure incentives" which would provide additional economic benefits to companies willing to make drugs or protocols which attempt to cure disease.

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

#194

Post by worldsayshi »

contravariant wrote: post #184
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.

Well, it's not like you couldn't make money by inventing an ideal cure, you just can't do so sustainably , but for better or worse sustainability has never been a particularly high priority for businesses. I think patents make any kind of free market approach difficult if not impossible, but it's not as if there's no monetary incentive to invent the 'best' cure.

I think there's a lot of survivorship bias in play here. Whatever company that makes the most money will grow the most relative to others.

The big companies will always be the most greedy one's but most companies may still have slightly different priorities. Companies that survive must be long term economically sustainable. Consequentially most companies that exist will likely prioritize economic sustainability because those are the one's that survive.

However, it might still be that it makes sense to start and work with temporary companies that are not long term sustainable if they do fix a problem?

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

#195

Post by rocqua »

PeterStuer wrote: post #156
TeMPOraL wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's totally ok, and it should be accepted. Public services are meant to be cost centers. If they bring in profits, they do so indirectly (e.g. better health of citizens -> better GDP -> more money in taxes). The trick is to still find ways to apply pressure so that a service gets better and more efficient in time, instead of attracting parasites that'll use it as money drain. Like a lot of healthcare-related…

"parasites that'll use it as money drain" sounds remarkably like shareholders.

The difference is that shareholders lose something (the value of their shares) when they drain a company of its assets. This might still be short-sighted, but there is at least a balancing force.

In public services, where making a loss is o.k. this is just included in the loss, and there is essentially nothing that encourages the 'parasite' to not drain the system.

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

#196

Post by celticninja »

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…

This is only if you treat healthcare as an economic good, it should be considered a social benefit rather than a cash cow.

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

#198

Post by Thriptic »

gpvos wrote: post #39

The story goes that in China, doctors used to be paid for keeping you healthy. When you got sick, they didn't get any money anymore. This sounds to me like a system with the proper incentives.

Really? Because then I would just take on young healthy patients and refuse to take on sick ones.

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

#199

Post by EamonnMR »

Bromskloss wrote: post #188
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…

What if a competitor shows up and can demonstrate that their treatment is better, for example that it does not lead to relapses?

The barrier to entry is extremely high. There are regulatory hurdles, hurdles to being taken seriously, etc. You need authorization for human trials, you need to get published, you need to convince insurance companies to pay for your product.

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

#200

Post by cage433 »

refurb wrote: post #158
arnoooooo wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most R&D, in the US as elsewhere, make massive use of public funds.

No, that's not true. Private R&D is almost 10x what public R&D is, at least in biotech.

Nope - that's not true.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_research#Privately_(in...

Private R&D is around 60% - however a large part of that is making minor changes to existing molecules in order to obtain fresh patents.The bigger, riskier research is done by the NIH and other publicly funded bodies. See

https://marianamazzucato.com/entrepreneurial-state/

Also - the quality of privately funded research is much worse, with non-reporting of negative results, data dredging and other dodgy activities being routine - see

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Pharma

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