5 ms·

I wonder if insurance companies do anything towards funding cheap "unsustainable" cures? Seems like it'd have a high ROI for them.

• teddyh 9y ago
  Companies don’t actually want profit if it would also benefit every competitor equally. A cure for a disease would benefit all insurance companies, so there is no competitive advantage for an insurance company to develop one.
  • nfriedly 9y ago
    Yea, good point. I can imagine ways where it works out well (e.g. the insurer that found the cheap cure patents it and charges some expensive price that's still significantly cheaper than a lifetime of non-curing treatments. Everybody wins, but the insurance company that owns the cure wins the most.)
    • teddyh 9y ago
      If they did that, they would no longer be an insurance provider, but a pharmaceutical company, and at that point there’s no reason to develop cures when short term mitigations are even more profitable.