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How a shampoo bottle is saving young lives

economist.com

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Re: How a shampoo bottle is saving young lives

#71

Post by icebraining »

alexbecker wrote: post #70
icebraining wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Medical device manufacturers would prefer to make a device with less waste, they'd make more money (see empires built on low price commodities). This seems like an oversimplification. The people capturing those gains are very often not the manufacturers. Often it's the retailers, not the manufacturers, who build those empires. Unless it's different specifically in the medical device industry; if so, do you have examp…

The medical device industry (at least in the US) is very special. It does not have retailers per se , but there are a lot of middlemen who take varying, often enormous cuts. Medical device manufacturers make enormous amounts of money though. I am not sure how much of this is specific to the internal US market vs. carries over to US exports. For a good treatment of this and many other aspects of US healthcare costs, s…

But are there examples of medical device manufacturers making a killing by selling low price commodities?

Re: How a shampoo bottle is saving young lives

#73

Post by chrismeller »

friedman23 wrote: post #67
CydeWeys wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This hack isn't necessary in the US because the hospitals can afford (and already have) the proper bubble CPAP devices, which are more effective than hacked-together shampoo bottles anyway. It's a good thing there's regulations in place here preventing the use of less effective hacks when better devices exist. And yeah, it's not just regulation but also legal liability that comes into play here; in the long run it's…

>This hack isn't necessary in the US because the hospitals can afford (and already have) the proper bubble CPAP devices, which are more effective than hacked-together shampoo bottles anyway. They can only afford it because we spend such an absurd amount of money on healthcare.

In this case it’s arguably one of those “well, it’s worth it” scenarios because there is evidence that the expensive version is better than the cheap version (though arguably perhaps not better enough to justify the cost).

The situation gets turned on it’s head when it’s an experimental procedure, though. “Insurance wouldn’t pay for x because it was experimental!” is an all too frequent complaint (it’s even the entire catalyst for the show Leverage).

Well, why do you think they don’t pay for it? Not only is it always insanely expensive, but it’s also got a 40% chance of success according to the doctor who wants to perform it (who is incentivized to keep his stats up) and it’s not endorsed by anyone... and that is a huge liability.

So I suppose my point here is that, for the armchair physicians online, every chance there is to save $1k there’s a chance to spend $100k. If you remove regulation you’re not just accomplishing savings on one thing, you’re opening up a pandora’s box of expense on another.

Re: How a shampoo bottle is saving young lives

#74

Post by chrismeller »

RA_Fisher wrote: post #50
chrismeller wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, is it really worth it to a doctor in the US? Even if I _know_ for a fact that it would work 100% absolutely the same as the multi-million dollar device, that's not the accepted procedure. I could still do it and save thousands of lives, but as soon as _anything_ goes wrong there's going to be a lawsuit and the fact that I used this crappy looking $5 thing is going to be a huge part of it, even if it had absolut…

If the doctor was doing good work, they should have no issue defending the work in a civil trial. Of course that's costly, but then again we have given a state-granted monopoly to lawyers: private bar associations that grant access to courts.

Well in an ideal world, sure.

Waiting five years for it to go to any kind of trial and then potentially being found guilty anyway because the jury sees an evil insurance corporation and an evil for-profit corporation and an evil, manipulative doctor trying to further his own career...

You’re going to lose anyway, and in the intervening 5 years you’re unemployable... and no matter how the trial turns out you’re also unemployable. That’s a lose-lose, and that’s why they always settle.

Re: How a shampoo bottle is saving young lives

#75

Post by CydeWeys »

friedman23 wrote: post #67
CydeWeys wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This hack isn't necessary in the US because the hospitals can afford (and already have) the proper bubble CPAP devices, which are more effective than hacked-together shampoo bottles anyway. It's a good thing there's regulations in place here preventing the use of less effective hacks when better devices exist. And yeah, it's not just regulation but also legal liability that comes into play here; in the long run it's…

>This hack isn't necessary in the US because the hospitals can afford (and already have) the proper bubble CPAP devices, which are more effective than hacked-together shampoo bottles anyway. They can only afford it because we spend such an absurd amount of money on healthcare.

No, it can be afforded because a multi-use $6k device is well worth it if it can help save infants' lives.

I don't understand your argument at all. Of course it's worth it that this device exists. It works. And it only exists because we've spent money on development and acquisition. This is exactly when higher spending on healthcare is beneficial. Contrast with Bangladesh, where they can't afford these devices and as a consequence many more infants die (or they have to hack together inferior replacements from shampoo bottles that don't work as well).

Re: How a shampoo bottle is saving young lives

#76

Post by dwild »

CydeWeys wrote: post #53
lultimouomo wrote: post #35

It's not clear to me if he invented a new device, or simply built a 2$ home made version of a 6000$ standard bubble-CPAP. In other word, is this a story about ingenuity saving lives, or about regulation and industry profiting on medical devices killing lives? (Note that I'm not saying that we necessarily have too much regulation or that medical industry profits too much; I'm just saying that in this specific case the…

I think the real story is that there is clearly a market need for a simpler and cheaper (if less effective) bubble CPAP, which will save many lives in countries that can't afford the $6K version. It wouldn't be used here in the US but it'd do a lot of good in Bangladesh. I don't think it's a story of over-regulation, as I doubt Bangladesh has regulations in place only allowing the $6K version.

> I don't think it's a story of over-regulation, as I doubt Bangladesh has regulations in place only allowing the $6K version.

Well it still could be. It's not because there's no over regulation there that there's the expertise required to build and market an inexpensive CPAP machine there. As far as we know, as soon as they get the expertise, they could just move to another country and get a better wage in doing so.

I'm a software engineer and it's something that I think about. I'm only making 60k$ in Canada while the US the average is higher and in USD. I'm only 2 hours away in car from the US.

Re: How a shampoo bottle is saving young lives

#77

Post by friedman23 »

CydeWeys wrote: post #75
friedman23 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This hack isn't necessary in the US because the hospitals can afford (and already have) the proper bubble CPAP devices, which are more effective than hacked-together shampoo bottles anyway. They can only afford it because we spend such an absurd amount of money on healthcare.

No, it can be afforded because a multi-use $6k device is well worth it if it can help save infants' lives. I don't understand your argument at all. Of course it's worth it that this device exists. It works. And it only exists because we've spent money on development and acquisition. This is exactly when higher spending on healthcare is beneficial. Contrast with Bangladesh, where they can't afford these devices and as…

My argument is that if this device could be produced and work using a shampoo bottle then it can be produced for less than $6000 and still be as effective. The problem of course is all of the hoops that need to be jumped over to get approval for even the simplest devices.

Re: How a shampoo bottle is saving young lives

#78

Post by alexbecker »

icebraining wrote: post #71
alexbecker wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The medical device industry (at least in the US) is very special. It does not have retailers per se , but there are a lot of middlemen who take varying, often enormous cuts. Medical device manufacturers make enormous amounts of money though. I am not sure how much of this is specific to the internal US market vs. carries over to US exports. For a good treatment of this and many other aspects of US healthcare costs, s…

But are there examples of medical device manufacturers making a killing by selling low price commodities?

I suspect that the manufacturing costs for many medical devices are quite low, e.g. stints, but this is not public data to my knowledge. But the manufacturers make a killing because they charge a high price.

Re: How a shampoo bottle is saving young lives

#79

Post by Markoff »

noir_lord wrote: post #59
AmericanChopper wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many languages do this as far as I can tell. I speak Indonesian and my girlfriend speaks Hindi, we come across words the languages share every so often. I’ll also catch a word in Tagalog or Dutch that I understand in Indonesian from time to time too.

My partner is Hungarian and her language and mine (I'm English) share very few words, it's strange with most languages I hear from other Europeans I can at least get one or two words fairly often but Hungarian is just straight Klingon. It's an interesting hidtory, it basically shares no (known) common roots like most languages around Europe do.

that's just not truth, they have pretty much same international words for paprika, balcony, auto etc.

Re: How a shampoo bottle is saving young lives

#80

Post by Markoff »

keithpeter wrote: post #22

"His invention was inspired by something he saw while visiting Australia." Exchange visits(+) a good use of money perhaps? - spark that innovation. (+) not necessarily just to 1st world countries by the way

it's not really innovation if he just copies something he saw abroad

i guess they could get inspired by military solutions in emergency situations which must be also hacked from what's available

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