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How Big Pharma reaps profits while hurting everyday Americans (2019)

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Re: How Big Pharma reaps profits while hurting everyday Americans (2019)

#51

Post by bobthepanda »

gambiting wrote: post #40
rqtwteye wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good start would be if the medical industry in the US were run like normal businesses with transparent and consistent pricing. Right now nobody can predict how much something cost because insurances, hospitals, drug companies and a lot of middlemen play all kinds of games. I think we should mandate that all prices are open so people know what's actually going on. Hospitals should also charge the same price for the…

>>A good start would be if the medical industry in the US were run like normal businesses with transparent and consistent pricing. People keep saying this, but I don't see how that helps in the slightest if you have had an accident and need help now . Or for non-urgent care - something is wrong, you don't know what, you go to two doctors, one recommends a set of tests for $5000, the other a different set for $10,000,…

It would provide some incentive to equalize across hospitals and rein in any sort of egregious outliers. Right now no one has any idea what is an outlier.

There was already list pricing published and some hospitals charge wildly different prices for the same tests, never mind with different insurers.

It wouldn’t solve everything but the base of knowledge we have is effectively zero, so something would be better than nothing.

Consumers in the US are also perfectly capable of shopping around for non-urgent care. They already do this for elective dentistry, for example.

Re: How Big Pharma reaps profits while hurting everyday Americans (2019)

#53

Post by gruez »

Jensson wrote: post #15
gruez wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pharmaceuticals is a pretty capital intensive industry. Who's providing the capital? The government? Moreover, who's providing oversight? Congress? Given how dysfunctional the government is right now, and the tendency of government programs to turn into jobs/pork barrel programs (eg. F35), I'm skeptical that it's going to work out better.

> Pharmaceuticals is a pretty capital intensive industry. The larger part of that is sales and marketing. They spend more on sales and marketing than research and development in USA. All that is wasted, publishing lots of manipulative ads and marketing material to get as many as possible to buy the most expensive medicines isn't a good use of our resources. https://www.ahip.org/news/articles/new-study-in-the-midst-of…

1. The study in question is from ahip, which is a trade association of health insurance providers. They have an incentive to push the blame of high healthcare costs on other companies, so claims by them should be taken with a grain of salt.

2. The above link doesn't actually actually provide the study, or mention the methodology. However searching around[1] it looks like similar claims in the past have issues, mainly due to how expenses are categorized in financial statements. Specifically, advertising/marketing spend is often lumped together with general and administrative spend, which overstates that figure.

[1] https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/16472/do-typica...

Re: How Big Pharma reaps profits while hurting everyday Americans (2019)

#55

Post by jmyeet »

WalterBright wrote: post #31
jmyeet wrote: post #9

The only "innovation" of capitalism is intermediation, otherwise called "rent-seeking". One of the big lies Big Pharma tells you is that R&D is expensive but the actual R&D is done primarily by government funding and research at colleges. Big Pharma spends WAAY more on marketing. The only real R&D Big Pharma does is patent extension. Patents have a life so companies will make minor changes to the molecule or the deli…

> This is capitalism working as intended: taking a captive market (eg diabetics that cannot live without insulin) and extracting wealth from them to the hands of a very few. People can't live without food, either, but every historical attempt at government agriculture has resulted in famine. With swinish capitalists engaging in food production, we're all the fattest people in history. As for the "very few", anyone ca…

> ... but every historical attempt at government agriculture has resulted in famine

So famine has been eliminated then? A quick Google search shows that ~9 million people die of hunger every year. There's no communism to blame that on, much as people like to talk about, say, famine in the USSR, but 9M deaths per year from intentionally withholding food under the auspices of capitalism doesn't get a second thought? Why is that?

> As for the "very few", anyone can buy stock ...

Things like 401ks have convinced people that they are participants. But owning 20 shares in Amazon doesn't make you a capital owner. Something like the wealth of the 8 richest people on Earth is about the same as the bottom 4 billion.

But sure, tell me some more about stock market participation.

Re: How Big Pharma reaps profits while hurting everyday Americans (2019)

#56

Post by jmyeet »

superbatfish wrote: post #20
jmyeet wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This actually makes my point. mRNA vaccines were researched in academic institutions for decades . The Covid 19 vaccines just took those vaccines and ran them through clinical trials. This isn't hard to verify. Just this week researchers were awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine for their work on mRNA vaccines. Did they work for Pfizer? Johnson and Johnson? Some other company? Or was it an academic institution?

Gotta love the word “just” in that first paragraph. The majority of the research money behind most (if not all) drugs, is spent well after academia’s contribution. Clinical trials are very costly, they usually fail, and yet they’re quite important!

> The majority of the research money behind most (if not all) drugs, is spent well after academia’s contribution

[citation needed]

Just look at the timeline for Covid 19 [1] and how late in the piece you get before a company like Moderna gets involved. What huge investment was made by Big Pharma here?

Even this was funded by Operation Warp Speed, another $10 billion in Federal money.

[1]: https://covid19.nih.gov/nih-strategic-response-covid-19/deca...

Re: How Big Pharma reaps profits while hurting everyday Americans (2019)

#57

Post by rcbdev »

WalterBright wrote: post #28
eganist wrote: post #2

Pharma strikes me as one of the industries that would benefit heavily from a few congressionally chartered nonprofits being booted up. Same employee comp (with cash substitutes for stock), same general structure, same incentives, but with a mandate to recycle profits back into new drug development rather than paying out to shareholders through buybacks, dividends, etc, all audited by a dedicated regulatory body to en…

I.e. you want the government to run industry. That never works well. > all audited by a dedicated regulatory body to ensure that comp and waste don't go into excess Since when has that ever worked for government run operations? > The hope would be that the industry doesn't actually profit off of human suffering I.e. industry works to alleviate suffering by providing the things that suffering people want. Their motiva…

Yeah - Europe is basically hell if you have health problems and in the US you get great, affordable and immediate treatment...

Having lived and had health issues in both, I can 100% guarantee that health care in Western Europe is much better than in the US for the average citizen. This is a fact.

Re: How Big Pharma reaps profits while hurting everyday Americans (2019)

#58

Post by twoodfin »

jmyeet wrote: post #56
superbatfish wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gotta love the word “just” in that first paragraph. The majority of the research money behind most (if not all) drugs, is spent well after academia’s contribution. Clinical trials are very costly, they usually fail, and yet they’re quite important!

> The majority of the research money behind most (if not all) drugs, is spent well after academia’s contribution [citation needed] Just look at the timeline for Covid 19 [1] and how late in the piece you get before a company like Moderna gets involved. What huge investment was made by Big Pharma here? Even this was funded by Operation Warp Speed, another $10 billion in Federal money. [1]: https://covid19.nih.gov/nih-…

Well, for one, if Moderna et al didn’t actually provide much value above the public research, why didn’t the Chinese quickly create their own highly effective mRNA vaccines?

Building the platform to turn research into practical drugs is hard, not to mention expensive and hardly guaranteed to succeed.

Re: How Big Pharma reaps profits while hurting everyday Americans (2019)

#59

Post by WalterBright »

jmyeet wrote: post #55
WalterBright wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is capitalism working as intended: taking a captive market (eg diabetics that cannot live without insulin) and extracting wealth from them to the hands of a very few. People can't live without food, either, but every historical attempt at government agriculture has resulted in famine. With swinish capitalists engaging in food production, we're all the fattest people in history. As for the "very few", anyone ca…

> ... but every historical attempt at government agriculture has resulted in famine So famine has been eliminated then? A quick Google search shows that ~9 million people die of hunger every year. There's no communism to blame that on, much as people like to talk about, say, famine in the USSR, but 9M deaths per year from intentionally withholding food under the auspices of capitalism doesn't get a second thought? Wh…

> A quick Google search shows that ~9 million people die of hunger every year

Show a cite, please.

> under the auspices of capitalism

Show us which country(s).

> owning 20 shares in Amazon doesn't make you a capital owner

Sure it does. You'll get a share in the profits.

Re: How Big Pharma reaps profits while hurting everyday Americans (2019)

#60

Post by WalterBright »

rcbdev wrote: post #57
WalterBright wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I.e. you want the government to run industry. That never works well. > all audited by a dedicated regulatory body to ensure that comp and waste don't go into excess Since when has that ever worked for government run operations? > The hope would be that the industry doesn't actually profit off of human suffering I.e. industry works to alleviate suffering by providing the things that suffering people want. Their motiva…

Yeah - Europe is basically hell if you have health problems and in the US you get great, affordable and immediate treatment... Having lived and had health issues in both, I can 100% guarantee that health care in Western Europe is much better than in the US for the average citizen. This is a fact.

The US system is well over 50% run by the government. Obamacare drove my insurance provider out of the state, and I'm stuck with the only one left. Thanks, Obama!

Before 1960 or so, the US health care business was free market and reasonably inexpensive. All government attempts to reduce health care costs cost cost increases.

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