Big Pharma Greed’s Knows No Bounds
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Big Pharma Greed’s Knows No Bounds
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Re: Big Pharma Greed’s Knows No Bounds
#2If you produce something socially useless, no one cares how much you charge for it, but if you produce something that saves lives, then it's "greedy" to charge as much money as possible for it.
Re: Big Pharma Greed’s Knows No Bounds
#3I want an end to Pharmaceutical Ads in the USA
Re: Big Pharma Greed’s Knows No Bounds
#4Even at 100x the price, the COVID vaccines have more consumer surplus than most things people buy.
I want pharma and medical innovation to be huge money makers. I want founders and early employees in companies that innovate in these spaces to be fabulously wealthy. I want ambitious young people to dream of becoming a billionaire by curing cancer rather thank making a social media app.
Re: Big Pharma Greed’s Knows No Bounds
#5Even at 100x the price, the COVID vaccines have more consumer surplus than most things people buy. I want pharma and medical innovation to be huge money makers. I want founders and early employees in companies that innovate in these spaces to be fabulously wealthy. I want ambitious young people to dream of becoming a billionaire by curing cancer rather thank making a social media app.
I agree in part and disagree in part. I want there to be a financial incentive to improve the lives of humanity via medical advances, whether that’s pharmaceutical, surgical, assistive devices, etc.
I also want to leave money for the rest of the economy, so that doesn’t really leave room for $5200/year/person for 2 COVID shots. (That’s about 7.5% of GDP just for COVID shots if every American gets 2 such shots per year, which is pretty obviously untenable.)
Re: Big Pharma Greed’s Knows No Bounds
#6Even at 100x the price, the COVID vaccines have more consumer surplus than most things people buy. I want pharma and medical innovation to be huge money makers. I want founders and early employees in companies that innovate in these spaces to be fabulously wealthy. I want ambitious young people to dream of becoming a billionaire by curing cancer rather thank making a social media app.
> I want pharma and medical innovation to be huge money makers. I want founders and early employees in companies that innovate in these spaces to be fabulously wealthy.
Sure, in an utopian world that would work. But, here on planet Earth, that would massively increase the incentives of fraud. There are already huge issues with this. Increasing the payout by x100 would do more harm than good in this context.
Re: Big Pharma Greed’s Knows No Bounds
#7If you produce something socially useless, no one cares how much you charge for it, but if you produce something that saves lives, then it's "greedy" to charge as much money as possible for it.
Worded differently: the less captive the audience, the less significant is the issue of price-gauging.
Re: Big Pharma Greed’s Knows No Bounds
#8If you produce something socially useless, no one cares how much you charge for it, but if you produce something that saves lives, then it's "greedy" to charge as much money as possible for it.
What people also don't realize is that they only have the 20 year patent period to make money in. After that the drug is copied by generics companies. This incentivises innovation while also not placing a permanent burden on the economy.
Pharmaceuticals are 10-20% of healthcare spending and probably have a very good $/lives saved ratio. Isn't it great how you can just take cefalexin instead of having to get cut open and have an infection drained? 90% of all prescriptions in America are for generic drugs that cost almost nothing. It's easy to blame pharmaceutical companies because it is a somewhat concentrated industry but no one questions why their local urgent care physician is making $275,000 a year to basically Google symptoms and give out prescriptions.
Re: Big Pharma Greed’s Knows No Bounds
#9If you produce something socially useless, no one cares how much you charge for it, but if you produce something that saves lives, then it's "greedy" to charge as much money as possible for it.
Yes, when your life doesn't depend on it, then you don't care as much if someone is trying to exploit you.
Re: Big Pharma Greed’s Knows No Bounds
#10If you produce something socially useless, no one cares how much you charge for it, but if you produce something that saves lives, then it's "greedy" to charge as much money as possible for it.
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 buy instead. Even when I worked at Apple I found it surprisingly easy to get by on an Android for my first three months.
2. I don’t die when I don’t have an iPhone.