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How do you respond to people that say the profit motive is what drives innovation, and in the long term we’d rather have better, novel treatments sooner
by acchow 2y ago
How do you respond to people that say the profit motive is what drives innovation, and in the long term we’d rather have better, novel treatments sooner
- jsheard 2y agoEven if that's true for the actual pharmas, how are insurance companies like UHC innovating? They're just middlemen.
- prettyStandard 2y agoThey prevent unnecessary treatments! /s
- nozzlegear 2y agoI'm not sure about UHC specifically, but insurance companies do innovate. Some insurers have invested pretty heavily in biotech and wearables, and they're also a big driver behind telehealth/remote health monitoring tech. We can cynically say that they're just in it because they want to reduce costs – and that's probably true – but it'd be simplistic to say investing to reduce costs is purely selfish.
- franktankbank 2y ago> biotech and wearables Tracking and data harvesting, excellent!
- nozzlegear 2y agoOr encouraging healthier lifestyles by blending technology with behavioral health incentives. Or both.
- ceejayoz 2y ago> they're also a big driver behind telehealth/remote health monitoring tech Until COVID, insurers in my area wouldn't cover telehealth at all. They opposed it tooth and nail.
- daveguy 2y agoProfit motives for medical / biotech research, yes. What innovations have insurance companies made in the last 100 years besides to squeeze out more profit?
- NickC25 2y agoA lot of that research is primarily done in university labs, mind you. On the taxpayer dime. Somehow the research escapes a lab and Pfizer manages to put some stupid name on it and reaps billions in profit.
- baq 2y agoI guess they have their own labs, you just never learn about their failed experiments.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago> failed experiments Wasn't that what Milla Jovovich was called in to deal with?
- shpongled 2y agoIt requires billions of dollars and a decade+ to translate academic research into a clinical outcome. Most academic research is not reproducible or robust enough to even be replicated outside of the lab that performed it - and this will only be discovered after spending millions of dollars of private funding.
- NickC25 2y agoI get that completely - and you're completely correct: most research isn't ready for clinical trials let alone commercial distribution. And even then, only a small amount of reproduce-able work matures into a finalized product. Yes, there needs to be financial incentives for the private sector to find promising work, and funding the next steps once it escapes the University ecosystem. I'm all for that. But as a society we need to be clear about where the initial funding comes from, and who those are who pay for that first round of funding are.
- bb88 2y agoProfit motive can also drive profiteering.
- bogwog 2y agoCompetition is what drives innovation. There are many ways to chase profits without innovating.
- pyrale 2y agoXerox parc is a good counter-example.
- pyrale 2y agoThey're totally wrong. War is what funds innovations. Imagine all the innovation we're missing on every day a country isn't being invaded!
- 1024core 2y agoWhat "innovation" is UnitedHealth doing, pray tell me?
- flatline 2y agoWe are talking about delivering care, not innovative medical technology. The biggest single target for innovation in care delivery is to get rid of private insurers. I think the graph at the top of this article really says it all: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2019/05/22/republicans-are-struggling-to-fix-americas-dysfunctional-health-care-system https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2019/05/22/republic...
- oneplane 2y agoBy informing them that most of that is funded by taxes and students doing all the work, not corporations and not based on their revenue. If anything, they have an incentive not to make better treatments because better often means less profitable.
- antisthenes 2y agoYou don't, because they are trolls. You can't possibly argue in good faith that being able to provide less than 0.1% of novel treatments is somehow more valuable than providing good, standard healthcare with already existing drugs and treatment protocols to the other 99.9% at a sane cost.
- adamc 2y agoI'd say we have an unsustainable system, and innovation that makes it less sustainable is not particularly helpful.