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Why Chemotherapy That Costs $70,000 in the U.S. Costs $2,500 in India

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Re: Why Chemotherapy That Costs $70,000 in the U.S. Costs $2,500 in India

#51

Post by brazzy »

gambiting wrote: post #11

My father has been on Glivec for the last 7 years, and this is the only reason he is still alive - when he was diagnosed with GIST doctors told him he would have 2 years left at best, but decided to add him to clinical trials of Glivec for GIST patients. The whole treatment is paid for by our national health care, I believe it costs....$3000 per month, that's how much a single box of Glivec costs here and my dad has…

How exactly is extracting the maximum possible revenue from people for giving them something that saves their lives NOT evil?

Re: Why Chemotherapy That Costs $70,000 in the U.S. Costs $2,500 in India

#52

Post by userulluipeste »

mansigandhi wrote: post #17
inDigiNeous wrote: post #5

Chemotherapy is a form therapy where the medicine companies heal the the patient off his money and then kill him.

Huh? Do you have an idea of how science and medicine works?

He was sarcastic.

Re: Why Chemotherapy That Costs $70,000 in the U.S. Costs $2,500 in India

#53

Post by MDS100 »

inDigiNeous wrote: post #24
mansigandhi wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? Do you have an idea of how science and medicine works?

Just wondering what this has to do with Hacker News. But anyway, check out: http://www.cancer-research-awareness.com/why-chemotherapy-ne... http://www.smashcancer.com/2010/08/22/cancer-lies-and-the-me... http://current.com/green/89138817_cancer-is-not-a-disease-ch... Just a few writings and articles speaking about the lie that is chemotherapy. I have an idea how medicine works, let me spell it out here for you: 1. Po…

Chemo sucks, because of the sides and the low improvement in meaningful outcomes. It's still one of the best treatments we have once

As someone that is in preventitive medicine: It's a bit more complicated. But one of the hardest part is changing peoples habits. Besides the rather crappy data available on prevention/diet etc.. Sensationalism and fear can help some to change their life. But there are better (more positive) methods.

Re: Why Chemotherapy That Costs $70,000 in the U.S. Costs $2,500 in India

#54

Post by omd »

adventured wrote: post #32
alive-or-not wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Health care R&D is extremely expensive in US (insanely high executive salaries, "lobbing" expenses, etc.). US companies may spend as much as the rest of the world, but deliver a lot less innovation.

I don't see any evidence to support your very dramatic claim. Quite the opposite. From early chemotherapy on to the human genome, stem cells, the Allen Brain Atlas, The Gates Foundation, modern biotechnology, organ regrowth, medical devices like the CT scanner (half invented in the US) or the da Vinci system of robotic surgery, etc etc etc the modern healthcare / pharma / biotech world owes a spectacularly massive de…

Such a useless comment. Everything you mentioned was arrived at by research which everyone shared when the vast majority of the research was happening...

Re: Why Chemotherapy That Costs $70,000 in the U.S. Costs $2,500 in India

#55

Post by brazzy »

inDigiNeous wrote: post #24
mansigandhi wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? Do you have an idea of how science and medicine works?

Just wondering what this has to do with Hacker News. But anyway, check out: http://www.cancer-research-awareness.com/why-chemotherapy-ne... http://www.smashcancer.com/2010/08/22/cancer-lies-and-the-me... http://current.com/green/89138817_cancer-is-not-a-disease-ch... Just a few writings and articles speaking about the lie that is chemotherapy. I have an idea how medicine works, let me spell it out here for you: 1. Po…

Thanks for answering the question: you have NO idea how science and medicine works and instead prefer regurgitating ideological bullshit.

Re: Why Chemotherapy That Costs $70,000 in the U.S. Costs $2,500 in India

#56

Post by arethuza »

venomsnake wrote: post #7
nhashem wrote: post #4

This is basically the paradox of US healthcare innovation. Canada can tell its pharmaceutical companies, "yeah, that cool drug you just invented, we're not gonna pay you what you want for that." And what option does the pharmaceutical company have? Convince healthcare providers to charge retail prices to their patients as an out-of-pocket expense, or... reduce prices accordingly. Because healthcare payments are not f…

According to Ben Goldcare (Bad Science, Bad Pharma) the companies spend around 12% of their budgets on R&D and 30% on marketing ... so the R&D is the easy part to be funded - just outlaw the direct marketing to consumers and doctors and the companies can spend 3 times as much on R&D with no problems.

Agreed - they are fantastic books.

His website is at: http://www.badscience.net/

Re: Why Chemotherapy That Costs $70,000 in the U.S. Costs $2,500 in India

#58

Post by TheAnimus »

gambiting wrote: post #36
inDigiNeous wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just wondering what this has to do with Hacker News. But anyway, check out: http://www.cancer-research-awareness.com/why-chemotherapy-ne... http://www.smashcancer.com/2010/08/22/cancer-lies-and-the-me... http://current.com/green/89138817_cancer-is-not-a-disease-ch... Just a few writings and articles speaking about the lie that is chemotherapy. I have an idea how medicine works, let me spell it out here for you: 1. Po…

This "lie", as you call chemotherapy, has kept my dad alive for 5 more years than what the doctors were giving him when he was first diagnosed. Would he get cancer if he didn't eat sugars,fats and over processed food our western society eats? Maybe. But you don't know that. Instead, you are trying to neglect the obvious, which is the fact that chemotherapy is actually saving lives of people like my dad. I agree that…

My father has been in remission now for coming up 6 years, the chemotherapy worked quite well I think.

He never smoked, didn't really have GMO crops even available to him to eat for most of his life.

I don't get why people like to have this idea that avoiding cancer is as simple as shopping at a more expensive supermarket. In a way it's almost a culture of victim blaming.

Re: Why Chemotherapy That Costs $70,000 in the U.S. Costs $2,500 in India

#59

Post by omd »

adventured wrote: post #30
ofacup wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

keep on believing. you're the defender of freedoms after all

That's embarrassing. What does your glib, mostly obnoxious comment have to do with anything factual? You hate America so much you can't even give it credit for positive things that are factually accurate?

I knew it was just a matter of time before American xenophobia came to HN.

Re: Why Chemotherapy That Costs $70,000 in the U.S. Costs $2,500 in India

#60

Post by gambiting »

brazzy wrote: post #51
gambiting wrote: post #11

My father has been on Glivec for the last 7 years, and this is the only reason he is still alive - when he was diagnosed with GIST doctors told him he would have 2 years left at best, but decided to add him to clinical trials of Glivec for GIST patients. The whole treatment is paid for by our national health care, I believe it costs....$3000 per month, that's how much a single box of Glivec costs here and my dad has…

How exactly is extracting the maximum possible revenue from people for giving them something that saves their lives NOT evil?

As far as I know, companies are supposed to make profit,they are not charities. Especially if you are so large that you sell shares in company, then you have a LEGAL obligation to the shareholders to always take decisions that maximise profit over everything else(unless you can show that selling your product cheaper is going to bring more money to the company in the long run). This is not "evil" - this is just how these companies work. It's like what Steve Jobs said,when he was asked by Obama what would it take to bring his business back to US, out of China. And Steve said very correctly, that there is nothing he can do - if the production is cheaper in China, they have to go that route,since they have legal obligations to work in the best interest of their shareholders. (and I am not saying this is a good thing. This is just how this entire system works, and if you opened your own company, you would have to play by the same rules,no matter how noble you were. If you want this situation to change, change the system)

The only way to combat this is to have a national health care system,that sets their own prices for drugs it buys from companies. If my country says that the maximum it can pay per box of Glivec is $3000, then Novartis can't do anything about it. Well, they could decide to not sell the drug at all, but they would rather have some money than none.

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