The Amish health care system

There are people that cannot afford insulin. THAT is a problem. But the fact that he took a risk, for fun, and suffered the consequences, rather than having everyone paying for it? That sounds a bit reasonable...

Note: important that the risk is voluntary, optional and recreational rather than professional. Why would the collective bear the costs, in those circumstances? Why is that fair?

But the principal still stands, no matter how much I may sympathize with someone they don’t get any right to make income from causing other people suffering.

The Amish are only sticklers to the 'no new technology' rule at home. At their places of business they are more than comfortable using electricity, power tools, telephones, and gasoline powered equipment.

So the Amish family you see out tending their garden may have a fully electrified cow barn up the road and a fully mechanized wood shop producing wooden furniture.

But in their home, they won't adopt even simple advancements such as the modern 'cool touch' wood stove. Old style wood stoves such as those widely used in Amish homes, are simply iron sheets containing a fire. As you might imagine that iron will be burning hot. Its comically easy to forget that the black iron is skin meltingly hot. Children are prone to touching the stove if unmonitored for even a moment. So a child might casually lean on the stove while going by and become horrifically burned.

A local hospital treats these burns and has established a relationship with the Amish where they don't report them to CPS for these horribly burned children and so the Amish feel comfortable in bringing them in for treatment. If the hospital started reporting them to CPS for these burns the Amish would stop bringing their children in for burn treatments.

HPV vaccines were first developed by the University of Queensland in Australia [1] and further improved by the the University of Queensland, Georgetown University Medical Center, University of Rochester, and the U.S. National Cancer Institute [1].

CRISPR was discovered by several researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT [2].

The public helped in the discovery of those treatments (through tax payer subsidies), and as such, in my view, are entitled to some kind of retribution. Having a form of universal healthcare, where the public can put pressure on companies to decrease the price of different treatment, is exactly that.

Regarding the velocity of innovation, I don't think it is hurt by a universal healthcare system. Everyone has access to those treatments, and so the profit on each instance of the treatment can be lowered while keeping the same total profit for the company manufacturing the pills.

What is the point to discover insuline if the price asked for a shot makes it impossible for some people to buy it ?

Even if some treatments, like drugs, can be made generic, and through that, have their price descrease in the futur, what about medical procedure ? Hip replacement won't suddenly or magically become cheaper in 5 years. Look at the price of stitches in the USA (For patients without health insurance, stitches typically cost $200-$3,000 or more, depending on the provider, the injury and the complexity of the repair [3]).

I do not propose to slash the profit of pharma companies. Like you said, academic studies consistently show that a reduction in current drug revenues leads to a fall in future research and the number of new drug discoveries [4]. Forbidding them one way or another to make a profit would be a net negative on the long term. But were our differences arise are in the implementtion of this principle. You propose, and correct me if I misunderstood, to let them set the price, and those how can will buy it. I propose to contain the cost so that all who need can afford it. The net result could be the same.

Price controls, like other types of controls, are a necessary evil in lots of case. It would be cheaper to allow companies to pollute everything and everyone, but we decided that society as a whole is better off with environmental controls. It would be cheaper to not test all those drugs and just let the market sort out which pills are working and which ones are dangerous, but we decided against it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HPV_vaccine#History [2] https://time.com/time-person-of-the-year-2016-crispr-runner-... [3] https://health.costhelper.com/stitches.html [4] https://itif.org/publications/2019/09/09/link-between-drug-p...