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Goldman Sachs questions whether curing patients is a sustainable business model

arstechnica.com

241–250 of 376 posts

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

#241

The health industry has no reason to cure patients. On the contrary, they have reasons to create new patients. And it's across the board. I tell myself exactly that when I look at my toothbrush. A toothbrush lasts about ~3 weeks before needing replacing. I'm sure someone in the industry will tell me that it's because it's made of unobtainium unicorn hair specially designed to make my teeth whiter and all that. I also…

The toothbrush is meant to remove a growing living substance, namely bacteria. The shotgun cleaner is meant to removal particles.

After a period of time the toothbrush too will become a colony of bacteria. It will then add to the existing problem or at least offer no benefit. This is why you should change them so often.

The shotgun cleaner is not used to remove bacteria primarily and will not suffer the same issue provided the particles/grime can be removed from it.

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

#243
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.

I would just lie and say all of my patients were healthy. This may be even more flawed

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

#244

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…

So, the ideal drug from a business point of view is heroin?

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

#245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US military is spectacularly inefficient, and the US military-industrial complex is a parasitical behemoth per Eisenhower's critique. It's not like the problem is unknown; the issue is that the state has to have a monopoly on violence, so we live with the inefficiency. Encouraging a marketplace of competing militia would not a viable approach. :)

The state doesn't have to have a monopoly on violence; as the use of private military contractors has proven.

> The state doesn't have to have a monopoly on violence; as the use of private military contractors has proven.

I don't think you know what the "[state] monopoly on violence" means. It does not mean all people authorized to use force are directly on the government payroll.

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

#247
post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wo…

Your source is all medical research. Not biotech specifically.

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

#248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that ok if a private actor can do it better and cheaper? Most cases for public services are not really based on any good justification. On the contrary accepting that they lose money from the get go will drive soviet style inflation of resources and bankruptcy in the long run. Its been tried.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_hea... Canadian here :). By that list, our per-capita healthcare costs are about half of what our neighbours to the south pay. I don't have it handy, but I've worked out the currency conversions and things before with various tax estimators, and in my province (Saskatchewan), we pay approximately the same overall income tax (Provincial + Federal) as someone mak…

Did you include the HST? And gasoline taxes? And the ability to deduct mortgage interest and up to $18K in your 401k?

My own person experience was that taxes were much lower in the US than Canada.

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

#250
post #142
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Some of the extra money does go to R&D (though that's somewhat misleading: a lot of "R&D" spending is unnecessary duplication of safety trials because the FDA doesn't recognise any foreign medical safety standards, not even e.g. the EU). But a substantial chunk of it is wasteful inefficiencies due to multiple layers of middlemen (there are typically 5 layers between the insurance company that's paying and the company…

"unnecessary duplication of safety trials because the FDA doesn't recognise any foreign medical safety standards, not even e.g. the EU)"

I would say in some cases that is a good thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide

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