3 ms·

One thing I'm mildly surprised hasn't shown up more in these types of markets is "pirated" or outright stolen clinical pharmaceuticals. Drugs like Humira or Eta

by olefoo 12y ago

One thing I'm mildly surprised hasn't shown up more in these types of markets is "pirated" or outright stolen clinical pharmaceuticals. Drugs like Humira or Etanercept are expensive and need to be taken for years ( usually for the rest of your life if you really need them ) and are heavily advertised. Selling Humira at $200 USD / dose would be profitable if you were using stock diverted from Abbott Labs, and selling a similar product using a black market supply-chain would still be effective; even if the trust in the product would be less than most sensible people would accept. Of course it would get not just the regular regulators on your tail, but the full panoply of intellectual property and medical enforcement. From a customers point of view it's pretty easy to justify paying a tenth of the "list price" for a drug that keeps you alive and functional; so the demand is there.

randallsquared 12y ago
Essentially everyone who needs those gets them through insurance, medicaid, or some such. They are therefore quite price-insensitive (which is it's own problem, of course).
- olefoo 12y ago
  Empirical evidence says that is not the case; and that most people who need them have to fight their insurance company for them on a semi-regular basis. If only that class of drugs were available at a competitive price so that individual consumers had a way to route around the damage that is our healthcare system.
  - randallsquared 12y ago
    Spending 10-15 hours on the phone two weeks a year to get the insurance company to pay 3K/month of medicine is cheaper for most people than spending 300/month themselves. Even if, as in this example with numbers pulled from nowhere, it's 1/10th the cost in monetary terms, the risk is not worth the savings for a drug that is actually necessary, rather than recreational or mere enhancement. A flatmate of mine has an immune deficiency disease which requires a drug every week which costs more than 3K/month, which is covered by her healthcare. If she doesn't get it, within a few months she'll be in the hospital with serious infections. She has to fight with the healthcare folks two or three times a year to remind them that this is actually a life-or-death matter for her, and then they grumble and continue paying. It in no way makes sense for her to start paying money out of pocket for questionable drugs from a source that might cease to exist in a month or two. If nothing else, assuming she needed to get it through "legitimate" channels again, they would use the time when she officially wasn't getting it as evidence that she doesn't need it. The risk around quality and continuing availability mean that there's no good way to use a shadowy market for anything which is actually required for life, if it's even semi-rare.

by olefoo 12y ago

randallsquared 12y ago

Essentially everyone who needs those gets them through insurance, medicaid, or some such. They are therefore quite price-insensitive (which is it's own problem, of course).

olefoo 12y ago
Empirical evidence says that is not the case; and that most people who need them have to fight their insurance company for them on a semi-regular basis. If only that class of drugs were available at a competitive price so that individual consumers had a way to route around the damage that is our healthcare system.
- randallsquared 12y ago
  Spending 10-15 hours on the phone two weeks a year to get the insurance company to pay 3K/month of medicine is cheaper for most people than spending 300/month themselves. Even if, as in this example with numbers pulled from nowhere, it's 1/10th the cost in monetary terms, the risk is not worth the savings for a drug that is actually necessary, rather than recreational or mere enhancement. A flatmate of mine has an immune deficiency disease which requires a drug every week which costs more than 3K/month, which is covered by her healthcare. If she doesn't get it, within a few months she'll be in the hospital with serious infections. She has to fight with the healthcare folks two or three times a year to remind them that this is actually a life-or-death matter for her, and then they grumble and continue paying. It in no way makes sense for her to start paying money out of pocket for questionable drugs from a source that might cease to exist in a month or two. If nothing else, assuming she needed to get it through "legitimate" channels again, they would use the time when she officially wasn't getting it as evidence that she doesn't need it. The risk around quality and continuing availability mean that there's no good way to use a shadowy market for anything which is actually required for life, if it's even semi-rare.