4 ms·
actually a difference is also how many players along the supply chain siphon money out of the process. the more greed is allowed and acted on for the treatment,
by anonyfox 11mo ago
actually a difference is also how many players along the supply chain siphon money out of the process. the more greed is allowed and acted on for the treatment, the more expensive it gets. introduce layers of insurances, hedgefonds, pension funds, lobbyism, ... it adds up to riddiculous amounts far beyond the original R&D/infrastructure/treatment costs.
- simondotau 11mo agoAnd those are just the downsides of a market-based system. There are also upsides of single-payer systems, like monopsony buying power.
- philipallstar 11mo agoAnd also downsides, e.g. many treatments just aren't available, and many others would never have had their discovery funded without the market-based system existing.
- simondotau 11mo agoNobody is advocating for eliminating a market-based system. My country (Australia) has both single-payer and a market-based private healthcare system.
- philipallstar 11mo agoYou can imagine how that system, like most, is actually getting its medical advancements from the US.
- rsynnott 11mo agoThis… is a think that people believe, but it’s not as simple as that. Most basic research is universities, all over the place. Many drugs are developed in Europe. A lot of medical machinery is developed and made in Europe (Siemens, Philips and Roche are huge in this space). Like most things, med tech is fairly globalised.
- simondotau 11mo agoAnd let's not forget that a substantial amount of medical research performed in the USA is not market-based but rather publicly funded through the NIH.
- jjcob 11mo agoAnd performed by researchers that received free education in their home country before moving to the US because they hope for a better career there...
- philipallstar 11mo agoThat's not an "and" - the NIH is funded by businesses in the US.
- philipallstar 11mo agoMost of that is funded by the NIH and not by the local systems. Spending money is easy.
- disgruntledphd2 11mo ago> This… is a think that people believe, but it’s not as simple as that. This is a thing people believe because pharmaceutical companies keep repeating it. And to be fair, they're not entirely wrong in that getting a drug/treatment from the lab to the pharmacy is incredibly expensive because most drugs don't work and clinical trials are super expensive. It does seem to me that a better system would be to split out the research/development and manufacturing of pharmaceuticals into the lab development (scientists), the clinical trials (should be government funded) and the manufacturing (this could easily be done via contract).
- philipallstar 11mo ago> It does seem to me that a better system would be to split out the research/development and manufacturing of pharmaceuticals into the lab development (scientists), the clinical trials (should be government funded) and the manufacturing (this could easily be done via contract). The market is there to risk money in the world of imperfect information trying to predict what would be good to pursue. That is one of the hardest parts of the process, but it's not even made your list.
- razakel 11mo agoThis is a comforting lie Americans tell themselves to justify being ripped off. You pay double the OECD average, and more per person for healthcare than the Swiss - and that's only counting the publicly funded parts!
- Clent 11mo agoThis implies the US is subsidizing the world's healthcare system and sacrificing it's own citizens for the benefit of every non-American. You're ok with that?
- philipallstar 11mo agoI'm okay with implying that, yes. More than implying it.
- bentcorner 11mo agoThis doesn't make any sense. If you make a thing, the price you set for selling that thing in a country has little to do with where you happen to be living when you made that thing.
- philipallstar 11mo agoSorry, I don't know how your example maps on to what I was saying.
- ben_w 11mo agoGovernments can (and do) directly fund medical research including drug discovery. This is in part because governments of even just middling competence have an incentive to keep their workforce (which also includes their military) healthy.