Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Big Pharma Greed’s Knows No Bounds

thenation.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 79 posts

Re: Big Pharma Greed’s Knows No Bounds

#11

Post by pdonis »

amadeuspagel wrote: post #2

If you produce something socially useless, no one cares how much you charge for it, but if you produce something that saves lives, then it's "greedy" to charge as much money as possible for it.

> if you produce something that saves lives, then it's "greedy" to charge as much money as possible for it.

If you take billions of taxpayer money to fund your research and get special access to information from government agencies like the NIH that the taxpayers paid for, and then you try to quadruple the price of what you're producing after you've already sold billions of units at a nice tidy profit, yes, that's greedy.

If pharmaceutical companies were free market entities who took all of the risk of developing new drugs, then it might be justifiable for them to charge whatever the market will bear. But that's not how drug research works in our society; in our society, we already pay for much of the research with our taxes, so pharma companies that are doing parts of the research and producing the drugs are not operating in a free market. They are benefiting from government largesse, and there are limitations that go along with that.

Re: Big Pharma Greed’s Knows No Bounds

#12

Post by manuelabeledo »

amadeuspagel wrote: post #2

If you produce something socially useless, no one cares how much you charge for it, but if you produce something that saves lives, then it's "greedy" to charge as much money as possible for it.

Well, yeah? That is, essentially, the definition of greed: a "selfish and excessive desire for something".

I would say that excluding people from accessing life saving drugs, is definitely "greedy", even more so if the company has received a massive influx of cash from the government, like Moderna.

Re: Big Pharma Greed’s Knows No Bounds

#13

Post by Swenrekcah »

amadeuspagel wrote: post #2

If you produce something socially useless, no one cares how much you charge for it, but if you produce something that saves lives, then it's "greedy" to charge as much money as possible for it.

Yes it is. It’s the “as much money as possible” part that makes it so.

It’s fine to charge cost plus some nice profit.

But trying to maximise the price in a medical context is morally equivalent to finding a person dying in the desert and making them sign all their assets over to you before giving them water.

Re: Big Pharma Greed’s Knows No Bounds

#14

Post by hourago »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #4

Even at 100x the price, the COVID vaccines have more consumer surplus than most things people buy. I want pharma and medical innovation to be huge money makers. I want founders and early employees in companies that innovate in these spaces to be fabulously wealthy. I want ambitious young people to dream of becoming a billionaire by curing cancer rather thank making a social media app.

> I want pharma and medical innovation to be huge money makers.

I want citizens to not die of treatable diseases. Our goals seem to be different.

Re: Big Pharma Greed’s Knows No Bounds

#16

Post by gtvwill »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #4

Even at 100x the price, the COVID vaccines have more consumer surplus than most things people buy. I want pharma and medical innovation to be huge money makers. I want founders and early employees in companies that innovate in these spaces to be fabulously wealthy. I want ambitious young people to dream of becoming a billionaire by curing cancer rather thank making a social media app.

Didn't really cure anything tho I'f they price treatment out of reach of the masses. It'd just be better seeing rules in place so billionaires don't exist. The concept one individual can have so much is absurd. Basically a sign of a failing society to allow such polarization between wages at the top and the bottom.

Re: Big Pharma Greed’s Knows No Bounds

#17

Post by nhchris »

pdonis wrote: post #11
amadeuspagel wrote: post #2

If you produce something socially useless, no one cares how much you charge for it, but if you produce something that saves lives, then it's "greedy" to charge as much money as possible for it.

> if you produce something that saves lives, then it's "greedy" to charge as much money as possible for it. If you take billions of taxpayer money to fund your research and get special access to information from government agencies like the NIH that the taxpayers paid for, and then you try to quadruple the price of what you're producing after you've already sold billions of units at a nice tidy profit, yes, that's gr…

> in our society, we already pay for much of the research with our taxes

I don't know if there was a study done for the Moderna vaccine funding, but the AstraZeneca vaccine research was 97% publicly funded, so "much" is an understatement.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/apr/15/oxfordastraz...

Re: Big Pharma Greed’s Knows No Bounds

#19

Post by nosianu »

nullish_signal wrote: post #3

I want an end to Pharmaceutical Ads in the USA

In support, the headline from four days ago:

> 70% of drugs advertised on TV are of “low therapeutic value,” study finds

> Ads often tout new, pricey drugs that are not much better than old, cheaper ones.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/01/most-prescription-dr...

Also:

> The US is one of only two countries that allows direct-to-consumer (DTC) drug advertisements, such as TV commercials. (The other is New Zealand.)

Re: Big Pharma Greed’s Knows No Bounds

#20

Post by Sebguer »

from wrote: post #8
amadeuspagel wrote: post #2

If you produce something socially useless, no one cares how much you charge for it, but if you produce something that saves lives, then it's "greedy" to charge as much money as possible for it.

What people also don't realize is that they only have the 20 year patent period to make money in. After that the drug is copied by generics companies. This incentivises innovation while also not placing a permanent burden on the economy. Pharmaceuticals are 10-20% of healthcare spending and probably have a very good $/lives saved ratio. Isn't it great how you can just take cefalexin instead of having to get cut open…

You're preaching a completely false dichotomy here, especially given that much of the research is publicly funded or heavily based upon existing public research, anyway.
Post reply on HN