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

71–79 of 79 posts

Re: Big Pharma Greed’s Knows No Bounds

#71

Post by luckylion »

detrites wrote: post #69
luckylion wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do that with "almost everything"? I can't think of anything. I don't think e.g. phone service is comparable, because while you might not pay when the service is down, the service's uptime doesn't depend on you. If you destroy your cell phone, you can't use the service, but the service is still working. If you sold "medicine as a service", it would just include that, but it couldn't guarantee that you'd always be h…

Sure we do, as soon as anything degrades or completely stops working, whether a product or service, we ditch it and/or it is worked on until it's fixed. Whereas with medicine, people will sit there and let the system slowly and agonisingly fail them over and over again, at tremendous personal expense, until they are literally dead. Medical malpractice - that is, a medical professional getting their treatment provably…

> Your analogy with cellphones doesn't relate this because cellphones work.

So do humans. But sometimes both of them stop working, or some part of them stops working. The service provider will not care if you break your cellphone, they only provide the cell service.

The problem with the idea of "you pay a flat fee for your health, and someone else makes sure you're healthy" doesn't work unless you also give them control over most of your life: what and how much (and when?) you eat, when and how much you sleep, any other substance you (ab-) use, what and how much physical activity you engage in. But who wants that?

Malpractice is a serious issue, but it won't be solved by "payment on success only", you just won't have anyone take on cases that are somewhat complicated, and then litigate forever to define what "success" means.

Re: Big Pharma Greed’s Knows No Bounds

#72

Post by pritambaral »

ProjectArcturis wrote: post #61
atonse wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And we paid them extremely well to do so. They made $18bn in profit. And the founder is with $6bn. That’s plenty of credit.

What's the economic value of returning the world to normalcy? It's in the trillions.

And how much of those spoils does Big Pharma deserve solely? Were there not other players who had a hand in this victory? Should they not share in the reaped economic value?

I'm talking, of course, of the public that paid for the development and roll-out of the vaccines.

Re: Big Pharma Greed’s Knows No Bounds

#73

Post by detrites »

luckylion wrote: post #71
detrites wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure we do, as soon as anything degrades or completely stops working, whether a product or service, we ditch it and/or it is worked on until it's fixed. Whereas with medicine, people will sit there and let the system slowly and agonisingly fail them over and over again, at tremendous personal expense, until they are literally dead. Medical malpractice - that is, a medical professional getting their treatment provably…

> Your analogy with cellphones doesn't relate this because cellphones work. So do humans. But sometimes both of them stop working, or some part of them stops working. The service provider will not care if you break your cellphone, they only provide the cell service. The problem with the idea of "you pay a flat fee for your health, and someone else makes sure you're healthy" doesn't work unless you also give them cont…

Mostly agree. The point of my bringing up the Chinese story was to highlight how far medicine, and apparently only medicine, seems to diverge from common principles, and - expounding later - how this is coincident with its failures.

Something is up with healthcare, and I don't claim to know exactly what it is, or what the solutions would be.

Where I don't agree is your misinterpreting the analogy to self-serve. A cellphone that works as bad as cans on a string is analogous to the healthcare industry working as bad as accidents. No one should put up with either.

But with healthcare, we do.

Re: Big Pharma Greed’s Knows No Bounds

#74

Post by TrueGeek »

ProjectArcturis wrote: post #63
TrueGeek wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yeah, I definitely checked. There are two companies that make it. Both are priced exactly the same though.

Yeah. This is regulatory arbitrage. It costs a lot to get certified to produce a medication (which is necessary, or else some company will cut corners and produce a contaminated drug). For drugs with small patient populations, it doesn't make sense to pay for that certification and then sell it cheaply. So the drug ends up being made by only a few manufacturers and the price stays high even though it's a generic. I d…

I’d buy that argument if their balance sheet didn’t show the vast majority of their budget going to advertising and if companies like CostPlusDrugs weren’t able to do it for pennies.

Re: Big Pharma Greed’s Knows No Bounds

#75

Post by dns_snek »

pritambaral wrote: post #72
ProjectArcturis wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the economic value of returning the world to normalcy? It's in the trillions.

And how much of those spoils does Big Pharma deserve solely? Were there not other players who had a hand in this victory? Should they not share in the reaped economic value? I'm talking, of course, of the public that paid for the development and roll-out of the vaccines.

The public didn't just pay for the development but also provided social and economic structures, infrastructure and education that allow these companies to exist in the first place.

Even if one believes that vaccines deserve all the credit for returning the world back to normalcy, Big pharma didn't save us. Scientists and other staff directly involved in R&D deserve the credit and they would continue to exist even if their work was organized in another, more efficient manner. I find it quite disturbing when the role of profiteering corporations is glorified like that.

Re: Big Pharma Greed’s Knows No Bounds

#76

Post by becuzThrowaway »

doubleg72 wrote: post #55
becuzThrowaway wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but it really is the case that we should disabuse ourselves from the notion that one should be entitled to life-saving care. I couldn't disagree more. If it truly is life-saving (as opposed to death-prolonging) care, we really should _dedicate_ ourselves to the notion that each of us should be entitled to life-saving care. That should be an explicit part of the social contract. Oh, and btw, society was NOT paying ~…

But thats just your opinion man.. not a single fact in all that gibberish. Until everyone has a will to live their best life, take care of themselves and you create a utopian society, the most cutting edge, life-saving drugs will be expensive and not an entitlement. You should do some research on medical billing and R&D costs in pharmaceutical development; those are two totally different things.

I would say it is a fact that medical billing has little relationship to actual costs of care. You should do some research on it.

It's also a fact that the real cutting-edge R&D is invariably funded by taxpayers, while pharmaceutical companies spend their budgets creating patentable variants, often cherry-picking studies to show marginal improvements over existing drugs. You should do some research on that, too.

Re: Big Pharma Greed’s Knows No Bounds

#77

Post by ProjectArcturis »

TrueGeek wrote: post #74
ProjectArcturis wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. This is regulatory arbitrage. It costs a lot to get certified to produce a medication (which is necessary, or else some company will cut corners and produce a contaminated drug). For drugs with small patient populations, it doesn't make sense to pay for that certification and then sell it cheaply. So the drug ends up being made by only a few manufacturers and the price stays high even though it's a generic. I d…

I’d buy that argument if their balance sheet didn’t show the vast majority of their budget going to advertising and if companies like CostPlusDrugs weren’t able to do it for pennies.

What company are you talking about? What drug? If CostPlusDrugs can do it for pennies, why not buy from them?

Re: Big Pharma Greed’s Knows No Bounds

#78

Post by hjkl0 »

throwawaymaths wrote: post #43
tombert wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t this the exact justification that Martin Shkreli used? It’s not hypocritical; when your life literally depends on something, and they have a monopoly on the only thing that will save your life, it’s absolutely greedy to try and maximize profits. When Apple overcharges for an iPhone, there are a few things that make this less evil: 1. There are lots of different smartphones out there that you have the option to…

Not justifying fleecing taxpayers, but you also generally don't pay for drugs, your insurance or Medicare does. Most pharma (including iirc shkreli's) companies have access programs. Not justifying Martin or excessive pharma prices but it really is the case that we should disabuse ourselves from the notion that one should be entitled to life-saving care. That process comes with a lot of externalities. Most drugs are…

> it really is the case that we should disabuse ourselves from the notion that one should be entitled to life-saving care.

I can’t imagine this point of view being very popular in places where universal health care is available.

And personally, I can’t imagine living in a place where it isn’t.

Re: Big Pharma Greed’s Knows No Bounds

#79

Post by xracy »

xracy wrote: post #44
pg_bot wrote: post #32

Big Pharma also pays billions in taxes to fund agencies like the NIH. While there are certainly a lot of shenanigans with intellectual property rights and market exclusivity at the end of the day we do get extreme value from pharmaceutical companies. If there was more competition, we would not see price hikes as often as we do.

People pretend like competition is some magic thing that could crop up, and not a thing that requires constant regulation to prevent companies from engaging in anti-competitive behavior. Every company is incentivized to engage in anti-competitive behavior. If you want more competition, they need to be strictly regulated.

As proof of this, consider how incentivized even sports teams are to cheat in what would otherwise be a fair competition.
Post reply on HN