11 ms·

It's not $11,000 for a plastic valve. It's $11,000 for a plastic valve and the many thousands of hours of R&D, testing, validation, certification and risk.

by Narkov 7y ago

tomrod 7y ago
Lovely. Duplication of fixed costs lead to natural monopolies. Sounds like there is room for intervention.
notRobot 7y ago
Still too much.
- Narkov 7y ago
  What are you basing that on? How much was spent on development that $11,000 is too much? $100k, $1m, $1b ?
- Turing_Machine 7y ago
  Maybe you (or someone) should go into the respirator business and undersell them on price?
  - chance_state 7y ago
    Sounds like that's already happening with a new price of "free" and they're not happy about it.
  - gameswithgo 7y ago
    someone just did and they are getting sued
  - jagger27 7y ago
    And risk getting sued by extremely well funded corporations protected by broad scope patents. It may well be the case that it is prohibitive to get proper regulatory approval to sell such a device.
    - sharemywin 7y ago
      you forgot all the medical savings groups(cartels) that won't buy from you because they're paid commission that the hospitals have contracts with so they can't buy from you.
    - Turing_Machine 7y ago
      Ventilators are early 1900s technology. You're not *going to "get sued" for a basic unit. And yeah, it costs a ton of money to get regulatory approval. So where do you think all that money comes from? Think maybe they have to build that into the price of the ventilator, so maybe it's not so "overpriced" at all? Maybe?
johnwheeler 7y ago
A hell of a lot of advertising, r&d etc goes into a can of Coke too. It doesn't cost 11,000 dollars
- Narkov 7y ago
  Are you comparing a can of Coke to a medical device? It's surprising that I need to say this but the economies of scale are completely different.
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    I've seen up close how medical devices are made. I've also been in a softdrink bottling plant. Based on those experiences I think your chances of acquiring some disease from a softdrink vs acquiring one from a medical device are about equal.
- throwaway894345 7y ago
  Coke cans don’t have the same regulatory hurdles and moreover there your coke can R&D is amortized over something like a trillion units. There’s a real argument for why this lawsuit is dumb, but this ain’t it.
jagger27 7y ago
Let's say the regulatory costs add up to $100,000,000 and the valve has a marginal cost of $1.00 to make and distribute. They would have to sell just 10,000 units to more than offset their investment. I think I'd wager the world needs more than 10,000 air valves. How can one justify this kind of vicious exploitation of publicly funded healthcare?
- Narkov 7y ago
  All three of your numbers are purely hypothetical and are likely out by one or two orders of magnitude. My point is that people saying that it is overpriced don't understand the input costs of medical devices.
  - jagger27 7y ago
    You're right, it's probably closer to a billion dollars to develop and $0.10 to produce. Doesn't change my argument very much.
  - gerdesj 7y ago
    "Let's say the regulatory costs add up to $100,000,000 and the valve has a marginal cost of $1.00 to make and distribute." That's two numbers relating to the cost of production. The second is the cost that a 3D printer doing one off prints actually costs (it's in the article, as a rough estimate.) The first number is a deliberately chosen "insane" example figure to show the absurdity of an $11,000 part. A medical test n license for a single part of a device does not cost anything like $100M. Now as to the market for these things - the third number. Nearly 8,000 people have died so far. I can't be arsed to extrapolate further but I recall reading that these are single use devices.
  - negrit 7y ago
    The very likely overpriced. The healthcare industry made over $100 billion in the US only in 2018. I've experienced it first hand, UCSF tried to force me into buying a ($174) kneebrace for over $2400... And the fact that they are threatening to sue for something they couldn't sell is disgusting.
  - 7y ago
indymike 7y ago
Um, $11k for your life is not a legal contract.
- inetknght 7y ago
  ...yet.
scotty79 7y ago
If your plan is to finance yourself by charging $11k for a piece of plastic maybe you need another plan because people will rightfully crucify you.
caymanjim 7y ago
> It's not $11,000 for a plastic valve. It's $11,000 for a plastic valve and the many thousands of hours of R&D, testing, validation, certification and risk. Nope. Sorry. Not buying that argument this time. I accept that argument for patent exclusion periods and high prices on medication, because the R&D has enormous risk costs when medications don't work or don't get approval. Allowing pharmaceutical companies to recoup those costs is vital to innovation and public health. This is a piece of plastic that's part of a larger machine. There was no enormous R&D budget required to develop the replaceable component. By all means let them make money on the machine, but the argument doesn't hold up for this simple maintenance component.
- Narkov 7y ago
  > There was no enormous R&D budget required to develop the replaceable component. Are you sure about this? Just because it is one small part of a complex device doesn't make it low cost. > By all means let them make money on the machine Ok...so the machine becomes (for example) $1m instead of $10k. The financial cost to use the machine remains the same.
- OnlineCourage 7y ago
  You don't get to, "not buy the argument," because R&D costs are constrained by layers of unimaginably complex legislation and compliance. The company had to jump through ridiculous hoops for every component of said machine. Until you pull out the book and say, "Nope, see here Section 93...they did not have to do X, it's needless," you don't really have a good counterpoint because this is the case for all medical equipment. You can't just out of the blue say, "Yeah but not this one!" The entire medical regulatory and compliance system is overly complex. You're making the $10000 toilet seat argument...yeah, well the toilet seat needed to be delivered to a highly regulated aircraft. Ironically those $10,000 toilet seats are now $300 because they are 3d printed.
  - jagger27 7y ago
    > The entire medical regulatory and compliance system is overly complex. And big companies take advantage of their position as the only ones who can navigate such a system to justify their sky high prices, and then they lobby to maintain that position. The valve in question looks to be for IV drug delivery, which is not a new technology. It's probably just a simple check valve.
nimchimpsky 7y ago
yeah you are right, the guys in italy should have let them die ?
e40 7y ago
Seriously, unless the inside of that value is really, really, really complex, I can't imagine it would take that much R&D, relative to the rest of the machine. I would think relative to that, this value was dead trivial.

It's not $11,000 for a plastic valve. It's $11,000 for a plastic valve and the many thousands of hours of R&D, testing, validation, certification and risk.

by Narkov 7y ago

It's not $11,000 for a plastic valve. It's $11,000 for a plastic valve and the many thousands of hours of R&D, testing, validation, certification and risk.

tomrod 7y ago

Lovely. Duplication of fixed costs lead to natural monopolies. Sounds like there is room for intervention.

notRobot 7y ago

Still too much.

Narkov 7y ago
What are you basing that on? How much was spent on development that $11,000 is too much? $100k, $1m, $1b ?
Turing_Machine 7y ago
Maybe you (or someone) should go into the respirator business and undersell them on price?
- chance_state 7y ago
  Sounds like that's already happening with a new price of "free" and they're not happy about it.
- gameswithgo 7y ago
  someone just did and they are getting sued
- jagger27 7y ago
  And risk getting sued by extremely well funded corporations protected by broad scope patents. It may well be the case that it is prohibitive to get proper regulatory approval to sell such a device.
  - sharemywin 7y ago
    you forgot all the medical savings groups(cartels) that won't buy from you because they're paid commission that the hospitals have contracts with so they can't buy from you.
  - Turing_Machine 7y ago
    Ventilators are early 1900s technology. You're not *going to "get sued" for a basic unit. And yeah, it costs a ton of money to get regulatory approval. So where do you think all that money comes from? Think maybe they have to build that into the price of the ventilator, so maybe it's not so "overpriced" at all? Maybe?

johnwheeler 7y ago

A hell of a lot of advertising, r&d etc goes into a can of Coke too. It doesn't cost 11,000 dollars

Narkov 7y ago
Are you comparing a can of Coke to a medical device? It's surprising that I need to say this but the economies of scale are completely different.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  I've seen up close how medical devices are made. I've also been in a softdrink bottling plant. Based on those experiences I think your chances of acquiring some disease from a softdrink vs acquiring one from a medical device are about equal.
throwaway894345 7y ago
Coke cans don’t have the same regulatory hurdles and moreover there your coke can R&D is amortized over something like a trillion units. There’s a real argument for why this lawsuit is dumb, but this ain’t it.

jagger27 7y ago

Let's say the regulatory costs add up to $100,000,000 and the valve has a marginal cost of $1.00 to make and distribute. They would have to sell just 10,000 units to more than offset their investment. I think I'd wager the world needs more than 10,000 air valves. How can one justify this kind of vicious exploitation of publicly funded healthcare?

Narkov 7y ago
All three of your numbers are purely hypothetical and are likely out by one or two orders of magnitude. My point is that people saying that it is overpriced don't understand the input costs of medical devices.
- jagger27 7y ago
  You're right, it's probably closer to a billion dollars to develop and $0.10 to produce. Doesn't change my argument very much.
- gerdesj 7y ago
  "Let's say the regulatory costs add up to $100,000,000 and the valve has a marginal cost of $1.00 to make and distribute." That's two numbers relating to the cost of production. The second is the cost that a 3D printer doing one off prints actually costs (it's in the article, as a rough estimate.) The first number is a deliberately chosen "insane" example figure to show the absurdity of an $11,000 part. A medical test n license for a single part of a device does not cost anything like $100M. Now as to the market for these things - the third number. Nearly 8,000 people have died so far. I can't be arsed to extrapolate further but I recall reading that these are single use devices.
- negrit 7y ago
  The very likely overpriced. The healthcare industry made over $100 billion in the US only in 2018. I've experienced it first hand, UCSF tried to force me into buying a ($174) kneebrace for over $2400... And the fact that they are threatening to sue for something they couldn't sell is disgusting.
- 7y ago

indymike 7y ago

Um, $11k for your life is not a legal contract.

inetknght 7y ago
...yet.

scotty79 7y ago

If your plan is to finance yourself by charging $11k for a piece of plastic maybe you need another plan because people will rightfully crucify you.

caymanjim 7y ago

> It's not $11,000 for a plastic valve. It's $11,000 for a plastic valve and the many thousands of hours of R&D, testing, validation, certification and risk. Nope. Sorry. Not buying that argument this time. I accept that argument for patent exclusion periods and high prices on medication, because the R&D has enormous risk costs when medications don't work or don't get approval. Allowing pharmaceutical companies to recoup those costs is vital to innovation and public health. This is a piece of plastic that's part of a larger machine. There was no enormous R&D budget required to develop the replaceable component. By all means let them make money on the machine, but the argument doesn't hold up for this simple maintenance component.

Narkov 7y ago
> There was no enormous R&D budget required to develop the replaceable component. Are you sure about this? Just because it is one small part of a complex device doesn't make it low cost. > By all means let them make money on the machine Ok...so the machine becomes (for example) $1m instead of $10k. The financial cost to use the machine remains the same.
OnlineCourage 7y ago
You don't get to, "not buy the argument," because R&D costs are constrained by layers of unimaginably complex legislation and compliance. The company had to jump through ridiculous hoops for every component of said machine. Until you pull out the book and say, "Nope, see here Section 93...they did not have to do X, it's needless," you don't really have a good counterpoint because this is the case for all medical equipment. You can't just out of the blue say, "Yeah but not this one!" The entire medical regulatory and compliance system is overly complex. You're making the $10000 toilet seat argument...yeah, well the toilet seat needed to be delivered to a highly regulated aircraft. Ironically those $10,000 toilet seats are now $300 because they are 3d printed.
- jagger27 7y ago
  > The entire medical regulatory and compliance system is overly complex. And big companies take advantage of their position as the only ones who can navigate such a system to justify their sky high prices, and then they lobby to maintain that position. The valve in question looks to be for IV drug delivery, which is not a new technology. It's probably just a simple check valve.

nimchimpsky 7y ago

yeah you are right, the guys in italy should have let them die ?

e40 7y ago

Seriously, unless the inside of that value is really, really, really complex, I can't imagine it would take that much R&D, relative to the rest of the machine. I would think relative to that, this value was dead trivial.