4 ms·

>Lets also not forget that if you can't make money off lifesaving drugs, you also won't bother to invent any new ones Citation needed. Extremely needed. Count

by vdaniuk 11y ago

>Lets also not forget that if you can't make money off lifesaving drugs, you also won't bother to invent any new ones Citation needed. Extremely needed. Counter-anecdote: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonas_Salk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonas_Salk edit: wording

Malarkey73 11y ago
If you can make exploitative profits from old drugs why risk your money making new ones?
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
mhb 11y ago
vdaniuk wrote and then deleted: "'Lets also not forget that if you can't make money off lifesaving drugs, you also won't bother to invent any new ones' Citation needed. Extremely needed. Counterfact: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonas_Salk" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonas_Salk" Here: http://www.investopedia.com/university/economics/economics3.asp http://www.investopedia.com/university/economics/economics3.... NB: the higher the price, the higher the quantity supplied
- bmelton 11y ago
  Not sure why you're seeing it as deleted. It was edited s/counterfact/counter-anecdote/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10751262 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10751262
yummyfajitas 11y ago
Are you saying I'm wrong, and that that pharma companies and others will donate hundreds of billions of dollars to drug development purely out of altruism? Or are you simply claiming that a small number of examples exist, therefore my claim doesn't follow as a hard and fast rule but merely as a trend?
- jacquesm 11y ago
  It's not exactly a fine line between altruism and price gouging, there is a huge scala of options in between. I find your comments in this thread hard to rhyme with your recent post about medical tourism. After all, if not for generics and your ability to move temporarily to a country where medical care is affordable you'd be out a very large amount of money over and beyond what you paid for your treatment. Clearly - for you - medication and care where you live is too expensive and you too would have benefited from more affordable medication and care.
  - yummyfajitas 11y ago
    I'm not sure why you find my comments hard to rhyme. In this thread I'm claiming that if you make it harder to make a profit off lifesaving drugs, people will probably invest their money elsewhere and produce fewer such drugs. Reduced demand (or price ceilings) lower quantity produced. In the other thread I claimed that if you consider alternate sellers of medical labor, you can get a lower price. Increased supply lowers price and increases quantity provided. Both of these claims are just classic Econ 101. If medical tourism was not an option for me I'd have paid full price in the US and considered myself extremely lucky to have the option to trade money for the ability to do sex positions besides "girl on top, me not moving". I hardly think I'm alone - how many people would be willing to give up all medical procedures invented since 1970 in return for lower prices?
    - jacquesm 11y ago
      But the problem lies in the fact that for 'medical tourism' to be an option at all you first have to achieve a certain amount of wealth and your social situation has to be one where you can just pack-up-and-leave for an x amount of time without your life ending up in disarray upon your return. For many people these are not options because of money in the first place so they would not be able to pay the full price in the US to begin with. It's just another wealth-begets-more-wealth story, your jump off point is already one of considerable privilege, one that relatively few people in the US have.
throwawaykf05 11y ago
You mean "counter-anecdote"?

by vdaniuk 11y ago

Malarkey73 11y ago

If you can make exploitative profits from old drugs why risk your money making new ones?

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

mhb 11y ago

vdaniuk wrote and then deleted: "'Lets also not forget that if you can't make money off lifesaving drugs, you also won't bother to invent any new ones' Citation needed. Extremely needed. Counterfact: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonas_Salk" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonas_Salk" Here: http://www.investopedia.com/university/economics/economics3.asp http://www.investopedia.com/university/economics/economics3.... NB: the higher the price, the higher the quantity supplied

bmelton 11y ago
Not sure why you're seeing it as deleted. It was edited s/counterfact/counter-anecdote/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10751262 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10751262

yummyfajitas 11y ago

Are you saying I'm wrong, and that that pharma companies and others will donate hundreds of billions of dollars to drug development purely out of altruism? Or are you simply claiming that a small number of examples exist, therefore my claim doesn't follow as a hard and fast rule but merely as a trend?

jacquesm 11y ago
It's not exactly a fine line between altruism and price gouging, there is a huge scala of options in between. I find your comments in this thread hard to rhyme with your recent post about medical tourism. After all, if not for generics and your ability to move temporarily to a country where medical care is affordable you'd be out a very large amount of money over and beyond what you paid for your treatment. Clearly - for you - medication and care where you live is too expensive and you too would have benefited from more affordable medication and care.
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  I'm not sure why you find my comments hard to rhyme. In this thread I'm claiming that if you make it harder to make a profit off lifesaving drugs, people will probably invest their money elsewhere and produce fewer such drugs. Reduced demand (or price ceilings) lower quantity produced. In the other thread I claimed that if you consider alternate sellers of medical labor, you can get a lower price. Increased supply lowers price and increases quantity provided. Both of these claims are just classic Econ 101. If medical tourism was not an option for me I'd have paid full price in the US and considered myself extremely lucky to have the option to trade money for the ability to do sex positions besides "girl on top, me not moving". I hardly think I'm alone - how many people would be willing to give up all medical procedures invented since 1970 in return for lower prices?
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    But the problem lies in the fact that for 'medical tourism' to be an option at all you first have to achieve a certain amount of wealth and your social situation has to be one where you can just pack-up-and-leave for an x amount of time without your life ending up in disarray upon your return. For many people these are not options because of money in the first place so they would not be able to pay the full price in the US to begin with. It's just another wealth-begets-more-wealth story, your jump off point is already one of considerable privilege, one that relatively few people in the US have.

throwawaykf05 11y ago

You mean "counter-anecdote"?