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The healthcare industry, especially in the US, isn't interested in finding cures for disease. It's interested in maximizing profits, which is a goal that the bu

The healthcare industry, especially in the US, isn't interested in finding cures for disease. It's interested in maximizing profits, which is a goal that the bureaucracy serves.

Retric 7mo ago
The healthcare industry in the US in made up a huge range of individual and organizations, they don’t all have the same motives. Suggesting otherwise is projecting your own fears not representative of reality.
- cucumber3732842 7mo ago
  >they don’t all have the same motives Regardless of their motives they're all subject to the same regulatory system so they can only stray so far for so long from the net effect of the incentives and remain not bankrupt and being auctioned to pay back creditors.
  - pixl97 7mo ago
    >they're all subject to the same regulatory system I mean different countries have different regulatory systems....
- tinfoilhatter 7mo ago
  Then feel free to point out the outliers that aren't interested in maximizing profits. https://www.somo.nl/big-pharma-raked-in-usd-90-billion-in-profits-with-covid-19-vaccines/ https://www.somo.nl/big-pharma-raked-in-usd-90-billion-in-pr... It seems to me that the leading vaccine manufacturers, who spend billions of dollars yearly in order to lobby US lawmakers that establish the bureaucracy the article is complaining about, are interested in just that (maximizing profits). It doesn't really matter much if there are individuals or other organizations interested in curing disease, when we have a system that allows for legal bribery of lawmakers, and other individuals / organizations with more money that value profits over anything else.
  - Retric 7mo ago
    A large portion of the US healthcare is through nonprofits who are more interested in continuing to exist than in maximizing profits. Vaccine companies are very interested in preventing disease not the kind of extended treatment people so often expect the healthcare industry to be looking for. They have an endless stream of new people being born every year so have no interest in people getting sick.
    - tinfoilhatter 7mo ago
      If people aren't getting sick, they have no revenue stream. Those non-profits you mentioned obviously aren't as capable of lobbying congress to influence industry regulation / bureaucracy as for-profit organizations are.
      - Retric 7mo ago
        Nonprofits constantly lobby congress for a huge range of reasons, but they also get results with a surprising amount of federal money going directly to such organizations independent of Medicare, Medicaid, etc. > If people aren't getting sick People also get sick outside the US. People still get vaccinated in the US for diseases with effectively zero new US cases because they haven’t been eradicated worldwide and would come back as soon as we stop vaccinating people.
- c0d3rPrimate 7mo ago
  [dead]
- h2zizzle 7mo ago
  Doesn't matter. Not all have the same level of influence. The ones with the most clearly follow GP's characterization.
ACCount37 7mo ago
Have you ever considered that "finding cures for disease" is really fucking hard to do? Things that were easy to cure were already cured some time in the past century. What remains is the hard to crack nuts that resist simple scalable methods. There's money to be had in curing HIV - but good luck pulling that off. Maybe someone will, this century.
- tinfoilhatter 7mo ago
  Have you ever considered that once a disease is cured, the industry can no longer profit off of it being a disease? Treating disease rather than curing it, is a much more profitable venture. How is there money to be had in curing HIV? It seems to me like it's much more profitable to continue selling expensive HIV treatments rather than curing the disease. Once a patient is cured, they no longer need to pay for expensive treatments.
  - ACCount37 7mo ago
    And? Why would that be my problem? I'm in the business of selling HIV cures, not HIV treatments. If I get to undercut your entire "HIV treatment" business AND line my pockets with your entire market share, then, good for me, bad for you. Sucks to suck. Should have cured HIV first if you didn't want me to do it. There are many, many, many examples of "newer and better treatment X kills the market share of older and worse treatment Y" in the history of healthcare. Your conspiracy theory model predicts this never happening.
  - inglor_cz 7mo ago
    So you think that complicated diseases are easily curable and the entire scientific world, including very different countries like China, has just decided to hide the knowledge? If your cynical take was correct, there would be no cures ever. And yet there are new ones all the time. For example, vaccines. There are way, way more vaccines developed in the 21st century than in the 250 years before that. Vaccines against HPV have reduced incidence of cervical cancers to basically 0 in the cohorts that obtained them. How come? Shouldn't Big Cancer be interested in treating cervical cancers expensively and promoting relapses? Even in cancers, your chances of surviving, say, Hodgkin's lymphoma, are now north of 90 per cent. The treatment is expensive, but time limited. You don't have to take pills for your entire life. How does that square with your view of the medical system as a machine for prolonging diseases indefinitely?
the_pwner224 7mo ago
.
- 1234letshaveatw 7mo ago
  "lax lab controls are a feature, not a bug" -Wuhan Institute of Virology
GuB-42 7mo ago
Healthy people are more productive, which mean they are better paid, which mean they have more money for healthcare, which means profits for the healthcare industry. Finding cures is a good way of maximizing profits, the best way actually, and if the healthcare industry is not doing that, it means that something else is stopping them. It can be bureaucracy, it can be just because it is really hard, it can be some systemic problem linked to health insurance and government funding, but I don't see how the healthcare industry wouldn't want to cure people. It is an industry where demand is guaranteed, diseases in general are not disappearing anytime soon, let alone aging.
- graemep 7mo ago
  yes and no. Finding treatments that require long term commitments is more profitable than finding cures. Look at the history of ulcer drugs. Pharmaceutical companies spent huge amounts to develop drugs that ameliorated symptoms, a two person team found a cure for most ulcers.

The healthcare industry, especially in the US, isn't interested in finding cures for disease. It's interested in maximizing profits, which is a goal that the bureaucracy serves.

Retric 7mo ago

The healthcare industry in the US in made up a huge range of individual and organizations, they don’t all have the same motives. Suggesting otherwise is projecting your own fears not representative of reality.

cucumber3732842 7mo ago
>they don’t all have the same motives Regardless of their motives they're all subject to the same regulatory system so they can only stray so far for so long from the net effect of the incentives and remain not bankrupt and being auctioned to pay back creditors.
- pixl97 7mo ago
  >they're all subject to the same regulatory system I mean different countries have different regulatory systems....
tinfoilhatter 7mo ago
Then feel free to point out the outliers that aren't interested in maximizing profits. https://www.somo.nl/big-pharma-raked-in-usd-90-billion-in-profits-with-covid-19-vaccines/ https://www.somo.nl/big-pharma-raked-in-usd-90-billion-in-pr... It seems to me that the leading vaccine manufacturers, who spend billions of dollars yearly in order to lobby US lawmakers that establish the bureaucracy the article is complaining about, are interested in just that (maximizing profits). It doesn't really matter much if there are individuals or other organizations interested in curing disease, when we have a system that allows for legal bribery of lawmakers, and other individuals / organizations with more money that value profits over anything else.
- Retric 7mo ago
  A large portion of the US healthcare is through nonprofits who are more interested in continuing to exist than in maximizing profits. Vaccine companies are very interested in preventing disease not the kind of extended treatment people so often expect the healthcare industry to be looking for. They have an endless stream of new people being born every year so have no interest in people getting sick.
  - tinfoilhatter 7mo ago
    If people aren't getting sick, they have no revenue stream. Those non-profits you mentioned obviously aren't as capable of lobbying congress to influence industry regulation / bureaucracy as for-profit organizations are.
    - Retric 7mo ago
      Nonprofits constantly lobby congress for a huge range of reasons, but they also get results with a surprising amount of federal money going directly to such organizations independent of Medicare, Medicaid, etc. > If people aren't getting sick People also get sick outside the US. People still get vaccinated in the US for diseases with effectively zero new US cases because they haven’t been eradicated worldwide and would come back as soon as we stop vaccinating people.
c0d3rPrimate 7mo ago
[dead]
h2zizzle 7mo ago
Doesn't matter. Not all have the same level of influence. The ones with the most clearly follow GP's characterization.

ACCount37 7mo ago

Have you ever considered that "finding cures for disease" is really fucking hard to do? Things that were easy to cure were already cured some time in the past century. What remains is the hard to crack nuts that resist simple scalable methods. There's money to be had in curing HIV - but good luck pulling that off. Maybe someone will, this century.

tinfoilhatter 7mo ago
Have you ever considered that once a disease is cured, the industry can no longer profit off of it being a disease? Treating disease rather than curing it, is a much more profitable venture. How is there money to be had in curing HIV? It seems to me like it's much more profitable to continue selling expensive HIV treatments rather than curing the disease. Once a patient is cured, they no longer need to pay for expensive treatments.
- ACCount37 7mo ago
  And? Why would that be my problem? I'm in the business of selling HIV cures, not HIV treatments. If I get to undercut your entire "HIV treatment" business AND line my pockets with your entire market share, then, good for me, bad for you. Sucks to suck. Should have cured HIV first if you didn't want me to do it. There are many, many, many examples of "newer and better treatment X kills the market share of older and worse treatment Y" in the history of healthcare. Your conspiracy theory model predicts this never happening.
- inglor_cz 7mo ago
  So you think that complicated diseases are easily curable and the entire scientific world, including very different countries like China, has just decided to hide the knowledge? If your cynical take was correct, there would be no cures ever. And yet there are new ones all the time. For example, vaccines. There are way, way more vaccines developed in the 21st century than in the 250 years before that. Vaccines against HPV have reduced incidence of cervical cancers to basically 0 in the cohorts that obtained them. How come? Shouldn't Big Cancer be interested in treating cervical cancers expensively and promoting relapses? Even in cancers, your chances of surviving, say, Hodgkin's lymphoma, are now north of 90 per cent. The treatment is expensive, but time limited. You don't have to take pills for your entire life. How does that square with your view of the medical system as a machine for prolonging diseases indefinitely?

the_pwner224 7mo ago

1234letshaveatw 7mo ago
"lax lab controls are a feature, not a bug" -Wuhan Institute of Virology

GuB-42 7mo ago

Healthy people are more productive, which mean they are better paid, which mean they have more money for healthcare, which means profits for the healthcare industry. Finding cures is a good way of maximizing profits, the best way actually, and if the healthcare industry is not doing that, it means that something else is stopping them. It can be bureaucracy, it can be just because it is really hard, it can be some systemic problem linked to health insurance and government funding, but I don't see how the healthcare industry wouldn't want to cure people. It is an industry where demand is guaranteed, diseases in general are not disappearing anytime soon, let alone aging.

graemep 7mo ago
yes and no. Finding treatments that require long term commitments is more profitable than finding cures. Look at the history of ulcer drugs. Pharmaceutical companies spent huge amounts to develop drugs that ameliorated symptoms, a two person team found a cure for most ulcers.