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Treat Medicines Like Netflix Treats Shows

nytimes.com

41–50 of 136 posts

Re: Treat Medicines Like Netflix Treats Shows

#41

I'll just leave this here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_drug_development#Res...

And I guess I'll just leave this here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/02/11/big-p...

What a terrible analysis. Pretty sure that number is just the "Selling, marketing and administrative expenses" line from the 10-K, which lumps all expenses outside of COGs, R&D and a few others.

That's not just marketing as people know it. It's all the other costs of running a company too.

Re: Treat Medicines Like Netflix Treats Shows

#42

This is insurance. Literally insurance. You pay a monthly fee in return for a good, service or cash payment should something happen. however in the USA, something odd has happened. For what ever reason, be it legal, cultural or other, copay, crippling buerocracy and down right greed has stopped the health system working properly. The problem with a "netflix" model, is that doctors can currently prescribe anything, re…

>For insurance to work, US doctors must follow national guidelines laid out by a scientific body (ie NICE in the UK) any deviation without justification would/should lead to fines and censure.

I don't think that's necessary for insurance to work - I think it's necessary for medicine to get cheaper. If I want a specialist to treat me as an individual and potentially prescribe something outside the norm, I should be able to pay a premium for that, and the doctor should be allowed to do it if it is going to work without threat of fines or censure because they didn't choose the cheaper option.

Re: Treat Medicines Like Netflix Treats Shows

#43
post #20

> For 1 billion Australian dollars — $766 million U.S. — Australia gets, for five years, all the hep C medicine it can use. What will happen in five years ? If we follow the Netflix model, a lot of what used to be available will simply stop being there because the producer will markup the price significantly. In Netflix case, I don't really care since I can download the movies from other sources anyway, but for drugs…

What's stopping the producer from marking up the price if there isn't a flat-rate price?

Re: Treat Medicines Like Netflix Treats Shows

#44
post #21

This seems quite important, and raises questions about whether free market capitalism is actually the best or only model to spur innovation (spoiler: I don't think it is, at all).

Especially when lives are at stake! Market capitalism is probably fine for coffee shops, less so for insulin pumps.

Can you name a country where the latest technology is developed by the gov't? Even in the highly socialist systems of Europe they rely on private companies to develop products.

Re: Treat Medicines Like Netflix Treats Shows

#45
The reason why Gilead is doing this is because their hepatitis C franchise has already slowed and will likely be much smaller in a few years. Far better to negotiate a deal like this and lock a country into buying your treatment than to lose market share against competitors.

Re: Treat Medicines Like Netflix Treats Shows

#46

This is insurance. Literally insurance. You pay a monthly fee in return for a good, service or cash payment should something happen. however in the USA, something odd has happened. For what ever reason, be it legal, cultural or other, copay, crippling buerocracy and down right greed has stopped the health system working properly. The problem with a "netflix" model, is that doctors can currently prescribe anything, re…

>The problem with a "netflix" model, is that doctors can currently prescribe anything, regardless of cost or efficacy

Unknown to almost everyone in the US is that if you are a Medicare patient, when you go to fill a Rx before the pharmacist fills the therapy, insurance software suggests cheaper generics to the pharmacist and requires the pharmacist to do the leg work of asking the doctor to change the Rx based on what the insurance company wants (ie the cheaper medication).

So the question might be..why would a pharmacist do what the insurance company software tells them... or why would a doctor second guess their initial Rx at the request of an insurance company trying to minimize their costs? Because if the pharmacist/pharmacy doesn’t do what insurance says or if the doctor doesn’t do what insurance says, they get dropped from the insurance network.

Re: Treat Medicines Like Netflix Treats Shows

#47
post #31

A great theory but one major flaw. The utility value of most tv and movies comes when they are brand new with quickly diminishing returns afterwards. Drugs on the other hand have equal utility for their lifetimes (until replaced by something better, which can in some cases take centuries). In fact sometimes a secondary use for a drug is found and its utility goes up. Entertainment rarely has increasing utility. Even…

Drug Patents come with time limits, after which any company can manufacture and sell as generics.

Re: Treat Medicines Like Netflix Treats Shows

#48

This is insurance. Literally insurance. You pay a monthly fee in return for a good, service or cash payment should something happen. however in the USA, something odd has happened. For what ever reason, be it legal, cultural or other, copay, crippling buerocracy and down right greed has stopped the health system working properly. The problem with a "netflix" model, is that doctors can currently prescribe anything, re…

>For insurance to work, US doctors must follow national guidelines laid out by a scientific body (ie NICE in the UK) any deviation without justification would/should lead to fines and censure. I don't think that's necessary for insurance to work - I think it's necessary for medicine to get cheaper. If I want a specialist to treat me as an individual and potentially prescribe something outside the norm, I should be ab…

This sounds like private healthcare in the UK. Many treatments and drugs that haven't been approved yet or deemed cost effective for the NHS are available from private providers and can be paid for out-of-pocket or by insurance - relatively cheap insurance because it has to compete with free (at point of use, lets not get into that debate).

Re: Treat Medicines Like Netflix Treats Shows

#49
post #39

Am I missing something: >A study just published in The New England Journal of Medicine found that on average, Australia pays $7,352 (U.S.) per course of treatment. It has been able to treat seven times as many patients as it would without the agreements. I guess the reason we don't treat medicine like Netflix is because most people don't want to spend $7352 for a course of penicillin....?

What does penicillin have to do with this?

Re: Treat Medicines Like Netflix Treats Shows

#50

This is insurance. Literally insurance. You pay a monthly fee in return for a good, service or cash payment should something happen. however in the USA, something odd has happened. For what ever reason, be it legal, cultural or other, copay, crippling buerocracy and down right greed has stopped the health system working properly. The problem with a "netflix" model, is that doctors can currently prescribe anything, re…

There isn't always an objective best treatment for a patient. Doctors should have license to use their knowledge of the patient and accumulated wisdom to prescribe what they think would be most helpful.

We have a list of drugs that work, it's the list of FDA-approved drugs.

Insurance will already try to get out of paying for anything that doesn't seem "normal."

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