5 ms·
This could be a tech-heavy lens, but I feel like some of the innovation in healthcare is driven by a profit motive (and funded by same in a lot of cases). I do
by sokoloff 2y ago
This could be a tech-heavy lens, but I feel like some of the innovation in healthcare is driven by a profit motive (and funded by same in a lot of cases).
I don’t know if removing all profit from the system results in an optimal outcome, but I suspect it does not.
- RobotToaster 2y agoMy understanding is that most early stage medical research on finding specific targets for drugs, and often drug discovery itself is publicly funded. Private funding only really takes over once you start trialling the drug in animals and then humans.
- sokoloff 2y agoIt’s not just drugs; look at the difference in medical equipment now versus 40 years ago. I’d sure rather pay a little extra and have 2024 equipment than 1984. That 2024 equipment exists because someone imagined they could make a profit if they successfully created it.
- Apocryphon 2y agoSurely the profit motive in selling medicines or equipment to doctors is decoupled from the profit motive of doctors, hospitals, and other providers, currently governed by the insurance industry? Countries with public healthcare still have health industries for the former.
- sokoloff 2y agoThe doctors and hospitals can't buy that equipment if they don't make any gross profit from patients (or some proxy for patients).
- Apocryphon 2y agoPublic healthcare systems are funded by taxes. There are also private nonprofit hospitals that are ironically profitable: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/10/15/769792903/how-non-profit-hospitals-are-driving-up-the-cost-of-health-care https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/10/15/769792903/how-...
- llamaimperative 2y agoHowever the trials in humans are really the primary source of cost and risk in drug development. It’d be great if there was some mechanism to push royalties back to the public agencies that funded the basic research though.