Earlier quoted context omitted.
I always approach these statements with skepticism. Okay, let’s say that there’s no money for the big pharma, what about governments with socialized health care? What about rich people and their loved ones who suffer from cancer? The “not much money in this” aspect seems believable only when the condition is a rare one but cancer is a huge unsolved issue for everyone, including rich people and politicians. How can th…
Further to that point, there is radically more money in big healthcare than there is in big pharma. In the US big healthcare is 8x-10x larger than big pharma. There is a lot of money to be made by big healthcare in any procedure in the US, including one as described by the article. Hospitals, admin, doctors, nurses, techs, medtech, they'll all be thrilled to ring the cash register instead of big pharma.
There’s no way one firm won’t pass up on a hundred million to save 50 firms from losing a billion.
The only time that happens is when BigCo gets the government to ban things, regulate the small firms out before they can even start selling stuff, or when the FDA drags its feet for a decade.
The fact the latter happens so often is one of the best reasons for public health insurance (IMO) because the US health industry is in many ways very far from a market where competition can efficiently account for stuff like this. But it’s not as bad to completely squeeze out whole new classes of treatments (new patented drugs is another story) which would be worse case scenario. Instead it tends to work through a million small rules but that only let the big guys exploit new stuff while potentially dragging their feet or charging 10x the cost, rather than completely excluding the market from it.