4 ms·
> mass murder for profit This doesn't make sense. Only an entity out to make a quick one-time score would literally kill their customers or potential customers
by aeorgnoieang 7y ago
> mass murder for profit
This doesn't make sense. Only an entity out to make a quick one-time score would literally kill their customers or potential customers. If anything, you'd want to bleed your customer for as much as you can, which is closer to what they actually do, e.g. provide 'discount programs' for people with less wealth or income to obtain drugs with high 'sticker prices' for much less.
Remember that, generally, if anyone is paying these high prices, it's insurance companies, not private individuals.
- inflatableDodo 7y agoThink of it as the 'Apple' strategy. The most money for the least effort is to have a high markup for the middle class and up while ignoring the bottom of the market entirely. If you release cheaper things for the bottom of the market this gets you much less profit for your spend and also many of your existing customers will opt for the cheaper versions. In medicine this is exacerbated by the fact that you do not have a nice range and market segmentation, you are selling the same product to everyone.
- Steuard 7y agoKilling all your customers is clearly a bad market strategy. But I expect that to truly maximize profits, you'd aim to price the drug a little higher than what some patients can possibly pay. Sure, a few people will die as a result, but your higher profit on the others will more than compensate for that lost income. It shouldn't be too hard to set up a nice little model to compute exactly what percentage of patients left to die will pay off most. Obviously this is awful, gross reasoning. But I think it's pretty solidly what pure economics would lead you to, and I expect that's what the term "mass murder for profit" is referring to.