B-b-but capitalism breeds innovasyun!!!
It does breed innovation, but it does nothing to distribute that innovation evenly or fairly.
“even”? “fair”? that doesn’t sound very capitalist to me
If you’re producing a product at a loss, you’re not going to be in business for very long. The bigger issue is that the treatments rely on companies to foot the cost of production for the promise of later profit. Cut the companies out, have medical centers manage production not-for-profit.
Let’s be perfectly clear: in no case would the pharmaceutical company be taking a loss. They just wouldn’t be making enough money.
Of course there is a cost to producing the therapy, maintaining equipment, training physicians; and the number of people who need this therapy is very small. So what? That just makes the therapy cost more per patient. Insurance premiums might go up a tiny bit, taxes might go up a tiny bit, depending on the healthcare system where you are.
deleted by creator
That just makes the therapy cost more per patient.
If a therapy costs too much, insurance will no longer pay for it.
And when insurance decides not to pay for a therapy that is only used by a handful of people, there are often only a handful of complaints.
Please change the title of your post to match the title of the article. The post as it is violates rule 4.
I have a rare genetic disorder and I’ve been waiting for a therapy for years.
It would be easy enough if there was enough money, too.
Thought about going to Vietnam or Thailand? I hear they are spearheading gene therapy tech.
Well, yes. That is “American Health Care”, a radical counter proposal to health care as most civilized countries, where humans come before profits, know it.
Welcome to for-profit healthcare. Disgusting.
deleted by creator
They’re already out the R&D money here. Ceasing to provide the product won’t bring that money back.
Yup.
I work for “medium pharma”. We spend between 1 and 5 dollars per experiment (depending on the cell type). We run close to 2 MILLION experiments every week. We are still years away from any of those experiments yielding a safe compound that can move on to human trials, assuming we don’t run out of money first.
Targeting drugs for rare diseases won’t be profitable until we achieve proper high-throughput experimentation, analysis, and somehow streamline the FDA approval process. The government needs to fund academic research on these diseases, but no university lab can match the kind of experiment production that we’re already doing in industry.
What do you think of Medicare price negotiation efforts? Or efforts to make largely government funded drugs patent free?
Very few drugs are largely government funded. The government funds basic research, but it won’t fund clinical trials. Pharma companies are almost entirely responsible for clinical trials, and they are way, way more expensive than basic research.
Coming from a part of the world where medical care is heavily for-profit in an impoverished country, it will be only accessible to those willing to pay for it in Lamborghini dollars.
Yes corporations are le bad but you can’t really expect anyone (except the occasional millionaire philanthropist) to invest large amounts of finite research money on ultra rare diseases.
It’s worse in systems without private capital. What incentive would a government have to invest in medical technology that doesn’t have the broadest appeal possible?
