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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

#271

Post by magicalist »

pjc50 wrote: post #174
aaavl2821 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the US were to make all drug R&D a public service they'd have to basically increase the current NIH budget from ~$30B to probably $150B It may be nice in theory to have government manage drug R&D, but it is not practical. It's simply too expensive

.. or a fifth of the military budget. "It's not practical of the US to maintain the most expensive military in the world, it's simply too expensive" said nobody in Congress ever.

> or a fifth of the military budget

And less than the projected increase in the deficit this year due to tax cuts and spending increases

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

#272

Post by andrepd »

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.

Aren't most public institutions non-profits? Don't many of these work well? What makes you think that a (truly) democratically run enterprise wouldn't satisfy the needs of its constituents?

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

#273

Post by bluGill »

dominotw wrote: post #70
kdelok wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flu vaccines aren't useless, but they also aren't 100% effective. The CDC reckoned they reduce the risk by about 40-60%. Flu is a variable pathogen, which means that it evolves to look different from an immune perspective over time. It follows clustered patterns, where the flu strain will look pretty similar (and vaccines will be more effective), then it "jumps" to a new cluster every few years or so (and the vaccine…

> CDC reckoned they reduce the risk by about 40-60%. curious, Do you have a link to this by any chance? According to this https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3693492/ After looking at "328 households with 1441 members, including 839 children," for an entire year (2011) these authors determined that there was a difference of 4/10ths of one percentage point between those who received flu vaccine and those who…

That is for 2011. The effectiveness of the vaccine is different every year. Some years it gets close to 80% (from memory and probably wrong), some years it is only 10%. The average across all years tends to be 40%.

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

#274

Post by bluGill »

megaman22 wrote: post #134
dominotw wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I almost wonder, in my more cynical moments, if "flu shots" are people just paying to get poked with a couple of cc's of saline, for all the effectiveness it seems to provide.

Don't confuse the flu with the common cold as many people do. The flu vaccine does nothing for the common cold.

Even at their worst the flu vaccine makes the flu less deadly when you get it.

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

#275

Post by sametmax »

logfromblammo wrote: post #263
sametmax wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Everything developed before science is suspected to be bunk. Everything developed after science is suspected to be bunk until the experiment has been replicated.

I think nobody suspected getting enough sleep was bunk before we did a study on 1000 people.

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

#277

Post by andrepd »

darawk wrote: post #259
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 sounds cute, but isn't really true. In a competitive market, there is still an incentive to find cures. If company A has a treatment with the properties you describe on the market, and company B comes out with a cure, guess who's going to get all the business?

Not if both company A and B (correctly) assess that they will reap more profits by investing in chronic treatment even when a one-shot cure is possible.

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

#278

Post by darawk »

andrepd wrote: post #277
darawk wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds cute, but isn't really true. In a competitive market, there is still an incentive to find cures. If company A has a treatment with the properties you describe on the market, and company B comes out with a cure, guess who's going to get all the business?

Not if both company A and B (correctly) assess that they will reap more profits by investing in chronic treatment even when a one-shot cure is possible.

No, because that's an unstable equilibrium. If you are company B, you know you can steal 100% of the business by finding a cure.

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

#279

Post by pbreit »

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…

Won't a cure beat mitigation in the marketplace every time? It's like selling shorter-life batteries so peolpe have to replace more frequently. Is that better business?

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

#280

Post by pbreit »

brann0 wrote: post #54
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…

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.

Nah. This Goldman contention is far from proven. In general, the cure is going to be more attractive in the marketplace.
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