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> The cost to taxpayers would be many times the benefit to taxpayers for something like this Really? Do you know how expensive supporting braille is? Accessibi
by albertgoeswoof 9y ago
> The cost to taxpayers would be many times the benefit to taxpayers for something like this
Really? Do you know how expensive supporting braille is? Accessibility requirements for software? Fitting a blind person's house out with accessible features? Providing public services and transit for the blind? Income support?
All of these things are costs absorbed by society, which you cover one way or another (e.g. taxes, additional costs in products & services etc.).
Being blind is a major disability, the lifetime cost to society of a single blind person is many multiples of 425k per eye.
> The best way for more medical innovation like this is for it to be expensive at first. Over time, competition and demand drives prices down. Pretty much all the medical technology we now take for granted was only accessible to the rich at first.
What?? What if there are no rich blind people competing for this care? How is the cost going to come down then?
- DanBC 9y agoBut this treatment isn't going to cure all blindness, so you're still going to have to have all those adaptations.
- bmmayer1 9y agoCertainly society doesn't absorb these costs evenly, and only a fraction of these costs are paid by taxpayers. I'd bet if you add up the total expenditure on the federal government level for services for the blind, it wouldn't justify trading it for curing people who suffer from this one genetic adaptation (given all the other people who are blind for other reasons). Plus, it's not as if every person will even get the procedure if it is free. There are complications. There are religious objections. There are personal preferences. Higher prices don't come down because rich people buy them. They come down because it creates incentives for new innovators to produce cheaper and more efficient methods.