4 ms·

> You are defending the position that we should let someone die because they don't have enough money to pay for medical treatment. > Are you really sure you wa

by darawk 9y ago

> You are defending the position that we should let someone die because they don't have enough money to pay for medical treatment. > Are you really sure you want to go there? Yes, I absolutely am. Grown-ups in the adult world have to make choices. We have limited resources and time, and yes, sometimes that means that we can't give life saving treatments to every person that needs it.

grk 9y ago
This sounds extremely weird when you read it in Europe.
- duncanawoods 9y ago
  Doesn't to me. Deploying limited resources effectively is critical to all care-giving. There is no "costs don't matter" in Europe. The US aspect that is weird is when the discussion is not really about maximising value, its actually about maximising profits.
- icebraining 9y ago
  We in Europe have the same choices to face. For example, " In June, Nice said the £48,000 per year price tag of the drug, which could benefit 450 women a year, could not be justified." https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/11785840/NICE-refuses-to-fund-ovarian-cancer-drug.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/11785840/NICE-refuse...
- holenda 9y ago
  No it does not. There are treatments that are deemed to expensive and will not be provided. Typically it will be a trade off between how effective the treatment is and how expensive it is. European healtcare systems does not have infinite money.
- darawk 9y ago
  You know that in Europe you don't automatically get any lifesaving treatment that exists, right? https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/the-cost-of-nhs-health-care-deciding-who-lives-and-who-dies-10096784.html https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families... https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/dec/20/drug-giants-hefty-prices-nhs-vital-medication-pharma-profits https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/dec/20/drug-giants-... http://jme.bmj.com/content/27/3/179 http://jme.bmj.com/content/27/3/179
2_listerine_pls 9y ago
Assuming they were limited, but what if they weren't ? Some drugs/treatments cost more just because a greedy murderer was allowed to rack the price.
- darawk 9y ago
  Occasionally that is true, but often if you look more deeply into the pricing of these things, that's really not the case. Pharmaceutical companies are businesses, and they invested hundreds of millions, sometimes billions of dollars of their own money to discover these treatments. They have to be able to recoup that cost in the market place. If you do not allow them to do that, they simply won't invest in finding the treatments anymore. There are alternative funding models, of course. We could have the government fund all pharmaceutical research. But that has a whole host of other problems. It's really actually a difficult problem without a simple solution. You might say "well, maybe we should do a mixed public/private model of some kind", and if you said that, you'd probably arrive at about what we have now in the US.
  - 2_listerine_pls 9y ago
    > Pharmaceutical companies ... invested hundreds of millions, ... to discover these treatments. Some purchased the rights only to rack up the prices. Just because they are a business doesn't mean they should be allowed.
    - darawk 9y ago
      Yes, that is true, but irrelevant. A purchasing entity can price the drug fairly, and an entity doing original research can price the drug unfairly. Whether or not the IP was bought and sold is a non-sequitur. What actually matters is that we have two problems: 1. How do we incentivize drug discovery? 2. How do we treat all the people that need treatment? Right now our answer to #1 is that we allow people to charge the people that need treatment, for a limited time. This system works ok, but there may be better ones. If you have any, i'd love to hear them.

by darawk 9y ago

grk 9y ago

This sounds extremely weird when you read it in Europe.

duncanawoods 9y ago
Doesn't to me. Deploying limited resources effectively is critical to all care-giving. There is no "costs don't matter" in Europe. The US aspect that is weird is when the discussion is not really about maximising value, its actually about maximising profits.
icebraining 9y ago
We in Europe have the same choices to face. For example, " In June, Nice said the £48,000 per year price tag of the drug, which could benefit 450 women a year, could not be justified." https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/11785840/NICE-refuses-to-fund-ovarian-cancer-drug.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/11785840/NICE-refuse...
holenda 9y ago
No it does not. There are treatments that are deemed to expensive and will not be provided. Typically it will be a trade off between how effective the treatment is and how expensive it is. European healtcare systems does not have infinite money.
darawk 9y ago
You know that in Europe you don't automatically get any lifesaving treatment that exists, right? https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/the-cost-of-nhs-health-care-deciding-who-lives-and-who-dies-10096784.html https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families... https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/dec/20/drug-giants-hefty-prices-nhs-vital-medication-pharma-profits https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/dec/20/drug-giants-... http://jme.bmj.com/content/27/3/179 http://jme.bmj.com/content/27/3/179

2_listerine_pls 9y ago

Assuming they were limited, but what if they weren't ? Some drugs/treatments cost more just because a greedy murderer was allowed to rack the price.

darawk 9y ago
Occasionally that is true, but often if you look more deeply into the pricing of these things, that's really not the case. Pharmaceutical companies are businesses, and they invested hundreds of millions, sometimes billions of dollars of their own money to discover these treatments. They have to be able to recoup that cost in the market place. If you do not allow them to do that, they simply won't invest in finding the treatments anymore. There are alternative funding models, of course. We could have the government fund all pharmaceutical research. But that has a whole host of other problems. It's really actually a difficult problem without a simple solution. You might say "well, maybe we should do a mixed public/private model of some kind", and if you said that, you'd probably arrive at about what we have now in the US.
- 2_listerine_pls 9y ago
  > Pharmaceutical companies ... invested hundreds of millions, ... to discover these treatments. Some purchased the rights only to rack up the prices. Just because they are a business doesn't mean they should be allowed.
  - darawk 9y ago
    Yes, that is true, but irrelevant. A purchasing entity can price the drug fairly, and an entity doing original research can price the drug unfairly. Whether or not the IP was bought and sold is a non-sequitur. What actually matters is that we have two problems: 1. How do we incentivize drug discovery? 2. How do we treat all the people that need treatment? Right now our answer to #1 is that we allow people to charge the people that need treatment, for a limited time. This system works ok, but there may be better ones. If you have any, i'd love to hear them.