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Treat Medicines Like Netflix Treats Shows

nytimes.com

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Re: Treat Medicines Like Netflix Treats Shows

#31

Post by jedberg »

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 the biggest sleeper hits have a short peak of utility until returning to baseline.

It’s two totally different utility models and I don’t think the cost models are transferable.

Re: Treat Medicines Like Netflix Treats Shows

#32

Post by [deleted] »

bencoder wrote: post #27
pyedpiper wrote: post #17

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

Not sure if you're posting this as a disagreement with the suggested model, or agreeing. From the link, it looks like it costs ~$10bn per successful drug, at the top end of that list. Australia paid $750m for 5 years access. Australia has ~1/10th the population of the United States. and ~1/3rd the population of the UK. If just the UK, USA and Australia paid at that same rate (per capita) then they would cover that 10…

[deleted]

Re: Treat Medicines Like Netflix Treats Shows

#33

Post by BurningFrog »

keiferski wrote: post #4

Maybe I’m missing something, but discussions on the cost of medicine never seem to question whether using prescription drugs is the right choice to begin with. IMO, it would be far preferable to treat pharmaceuticals as a last resort, focusing instead on preventative medicine and addressing the underlying social issues that cause the medicine to be prescribed in the first place. From the article: Hep C kills more peo…

> Surely the solution to this epidemic is to address the underlying drug problems first?

If we were gods who could "address" any problem we wish by pure will power, that would make perfect sense.

For mere humans, some problems are much harder than others, and it's best to focus efforts on the solvable ones.

Re: Treat Medicines Like Netflix Treats Shows

#34

Post by VikingCoder »

jedberg wrote: 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…

I don't understand how you're measuring.

Hep C medicine has zero utility value for me right now.

And I'm enjoying watching Brooklyn 99 from the beginning right now, because I'd never seen it. My wife is watching series after series on Netflix that are all old.

My daughter is enjoying the entire archive of Disney movies. Snow White is what, 82 years old?

When Incredibles 2 is coming out, you can bet the utility of Incredibles 1 went way up.

That said, I think you're being entirely too specific and literal. It's a bad, clickbait analogy. And? Buy medicine in bulk. Not a huge leap to make.

Re: Treat Medicines Like Netflix Treats Shows

#36

Post by jopsen »

Mirioron wrote: post #25
ahoy wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The part of medicine that's often overlooked is the creation of new medicine. Usually the discussion goes along the lines of "we can make pill X for $0.1 each, but these greedy pharmaceutical companies just want profits". But what they're missing is that without those pharmaceutical companies we probably would have far fewer treatments/drugs in the first place. Doctors and labs need money to run. Investors help with…

> If you chase investors out then less research will be done. You won't feel it immediately but after a decade or two it will catch up with us.

I don't think you'll feel it... BUT, if we keep investing in drug research we'll feel it :)

You don't have to look far to fine an article like "Cancer Statistics Report: Death Rate Down 23% in 21 Years"

I'm not sure we'll notice if the improvements don't keep coming, but we will notice if the improvements keep coming :)

Today, we're keenly aware how HIV isn't a death sentence anymore.

Re: Treat Medicines Like Netflix Treats Shows

#37

Post by KaiserPro »

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, regardless of cost or efficacy. There are legions of people around the USA bribing doctors to prescribe expensive generics. Until that practise is stopped the US system is sunk.

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. They would set out a list of drugs that work for certain conditions, anything else is either poor value for money, or the wrong drug.

The very fact that medicare is legally barred from negotiating volume discount tells you that some deeply wrong has happened.

Re: Treat Medicines Like Netflix Treats Shows

#38

Post by noelsusman »

keiferski wrote: post #4

Maybe I’m missing something, but discussions on the cost of medicine never seem to question whether using prescription drugs is the right choice to begin with. IMO, it would be far preferable to treat pharmaceuticals as a last resort, focusing instead on preventative medicine and addressing the underlying social issues that cause the medicine to be prescribed in the first place. From the article: Hep C kills more peo…

Addressing the underlying problem is orders of magnitude more difficult. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try (and we already are trying), but saying "just fix the root cause" isn't actually a helpful suggestion.

Re: Treat Medicines Like Netflix Treats Shows

#39

Post by anjc »

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....?

Re: Treat Medicines Like Netflix Treats Shows

#40

Post by BurningFrog »

IMTDb wrote: 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 will happen in five years ?

According to the article, Australia is on track to have hep C eradicated by 2026.

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