2 ms·

I don't think that's a great analogy, since giving someone a hand when they are dangling off a cliff is easy and anyone (who happened to be around) could do it

I don't think that's a great analogy, since giving someone a hand when they are dangling off a cliff is easy and anyone (who happened to be around) could do it at low cost. Developing new medical treatments is incredibly expensive and difficult, and only part of that is because of regulatory burdens. You aren't just playing to develop the treatment you are receiving, but also the dozens of potential treatments that the pharma companies invested huge amounts of money into that didn't end up working out.

DFHippie 4y ago
This is all beside the point. It is incredibly difficult to carve a palace into a grain of rice inside a bottle. There is no great profit in it, though. Pharma is profitable not because it is difficult but because its customers are desperate, have limited choices, and are dependent on experts to make those choices; experts who also profit from the market failure inherent in medicine.