Goldman Sachs Asks: 'Is Curing Patients a Sustainable Business Model?' (cnbc.com) 443
Goldman Sachs analysts attempted to address a touchy subject for biotech companies, especially those involved in the pioneering "gene therapy" treatment: cures could be bad for business in the long run. "Is curing patients a sustainable business model?" analysts ask in an April 10 report entitled "The Genome Revolution." From a report: "The potential to deliver 'one shot cures' is one of the most attractive aspects of gene therapy, genetically-engineered cell therapy and gene editing. However, such treatments offer a very different outlook with regard to recurring revenue versus chronic therapies," analyst Salveen Richter wrote in the note to clients Tuesday. "While this proposition carries tremendous value for patients and society, it could represent a challenge for genome medicine developers looking for sustained cash flow."
Richter cited Gilead Sciences' treatments for hepatitis C, which achieved cure rates of more than 90 percent. The company's U.S. sales for these hepatitis C treatments peaked at $12.5 billion in 2015, but have been falling ever since. Goldman estimates the U.S. sales for these treatments will be less than $4 billion this year, according to a table in the report. "GILD is a case in point, where the success of its hepatitis C franchise has gradually exhausted the available pool of treatable patients," the analyst wrote.
Richter cited Gilead Sciences' treatments for hepatitis C, which achieved cure rates of more than 90 percent. The company's U.S. sales for these hepatitis C treatments peaked at $12.5 billion in 2015, but have been falling ever since. Goldman estimates the U.S. sales for these treatments will be less than $4 billion this year, according to a table in the report. "GILD is a case in point, where the success of its hepatitis C franchise has gradually exhausted the available pool of treatable patients," the analyst wrote.
Published 3:15 PM ET Wed, 11 April 2018 (Score:5, Funny)
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Well.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Time to blacklist anyone working at goldman sachs from getting any sort of cure.
Re:Well.. (Score:5, Insightful)
My Doctors' group practice... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Well.. (Score:2, Informative)
Salveen is Indian. Also obvious from her instantly googleable photos, Ms Richter is clearly a practicing Hindu.
Jews in India (Score:3)
The Jews in India came to India when the early Christians were massacring them for being complicit in the death of Christ. Hindu kings gave them sanctuary. Hindu kings also gave sanctuary to early Christians when the Romans were oppressing them. They gave sanctuary to Zoroastrians from iran when the Iranians were being forced to convert to Islam. India has a long tradition of sanctuary and allowing people to continue to practice their religion. This is a function of the Hindu religion which is Polytheistic
Re:Well.. (Score:5, Interesting)
No, they're got a point. Of course it isn't a sustainable business model. But that's OK. As long as the business gets a good ROI over time time period it doesn't matter if the profits dry up eventually. All this means is if you're going to value a company over the longer term, you should probably take effects like this into account.
Re:Well.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why cure them entirely though, when you can mostly-cure them and treat the remaining effects with a lifetime supply of patented drugs?
There is a market failure to research complete and cost effective cures for diseases.
Medical research should be entirely funded by the public, and all patents and treatments that result made available to the public for free.
Obviously, this leads to a better system. Stop trying to defend the status quo.
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Brazil has a quite interesting way to deal with it.
Basically, there are those "generic medications" that are pretty much the same medications of the big pharma but named by the components instead of brands, and the drug store sellers will find the correct generic of x medication of you ask for it.
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They are just freeloading on research done by others, while contributing nothing to the advancement of medical knowledge.
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Keeping people alive generally yields in good results in research as you have more alive people thinking.
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Re: Well.. (Score:4, Informative)
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Medical research should be entirely funded by the public, and all patents and treatments that result made available to the public for free.
So, you'd ban any privately funded medical research then? That doesn't sound like a society I'd want to live in. In that case the government has a monopoly on medical research and if you had some disease that the government didn't feel like researching then you won't get treated. If you had piles of money that you'd be willing to spend on a cure for your own disease, or donate to someone with a similar goal of finding a cure, then the government would bar you from doing so.
No need to ban it. Just need to stop enforcing the monopolies.
If government paid for it, everyone can have it.
If you paid for it, you can either share it, or not, but the government doesn't prevent others from using it, it's your problem.
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If I may point out, this trade-off of short-term benefit versus long-term profit is true for many forms of technological obsolescence. A final technological solution to a long-standing industry requirement is one of the reasons for patents: it provides a reward to the inventors of the technology, for a limited period, so that the technology will be published and be available to the world.
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What exactly is the business model in question? It seems to me that it's exploiting the patent system for all it's worth. You develop a drug and then hold it over the heads of disease sufferers - charging extortionate prices until you no longer can. The difference between a cure and a cash cow in this model is the difference in time between when the pool of disease sufferers dries up and when the patent expires.
It would seem to me that reducing the length (and extendability) of drug patents would render
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Profits from the Smallpox vaccine literally dropped to zero shortly after is was introduced.
The shareholders were quite angry about that, I remember it well.
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Profits from the Smallpox vaccine literally dropped to zero shortly after is was introduced.
The shareholders were quite angry about that, I remember it well.
Also, if I recall correctly, none of the shareholders, or their children, have died of Smallpox.
I hope they put that on their ROI scale too.
Re:Well.. (Score:5, Interesting)
No, it's actually about high time somebody asked this question.
The devil is not not talking about it, but what you make
of that information. If the answer is "no", and the commonly agreed upon consequence
is that we stop curing, then that's a big problem.
But if the answer is "no", and the consequence is that we need
to work towards making medical care a non-profit social enterprise,
then that's a totally different pair of shoes.
In any case, whatever the answer and whichever way the debate
about the consequences goes, it all begins with the answer.
(If you don't want the debate to make a turn for the most inhumane,
then I guess you better be part of it early on instead of getting
busy grinding your pitchfork just yet...)
Then let's ask (Score:5, Interesting)
No, it's actually about high time somebody asked this question.
I've recently been thinking about this a little in terms of game theory: Insurance companies see medical care as an expense and premiums as income. Patients see medical care as a benefit and insurance premiums as an expense. This has led to a system with a whole lot of problems, but the fundamental flaw is that the two sides have fundamentally conflicting goals.
How can we rework this into a better system?
The first thing we need to do is define the goal of the system, and "longer average lifespan" seems like the right goal. We can also add a quality of life rider by saying that anyone can check out if their life becomes unbearable, with lots of safeguards against coercion and suicidal depression and such. (I imagine a process similar to sex-change operations - the patient has to really want it over an extended time, and have psychiatrist buy-in.)
With "longer average lifespan" as the goal, now how do we pay the doctors?
One answer might be to assign to the *doctor* (primary care physician) a monthly fee per patient, regardless of that patient needing medical service. If patients could switch to a new doctor at any time and for any reason, doctors would then have incentive to a) provide the best medical care, b) compete with each other for quality of service, and c) keep their patients healthy, happy, and long-lived.
This seems to work at the "primary care physician" level, but it isn't a good fit for specialist and above, hospital care and ER. The PCP should feel free to refer a patient to a specialist without incurring a drop in salary, and an ER doc should have incentive to save a patient's life without regard to payment.
Also, medical research should be included, so that there's incentive to cure diseases instead of masking symptoms.
Anyone good at game theory like to add to this model?
Does this work under game theory? (Score:4, Insightful)
That is basically the ancient Chinese model. Everyone living in the same lock with the doctor payed a monthly fee.
Got he sick, he stopped paying and visited the doctor. As soon as he was cured, he payed again.
I'm not sure this would work under game theory, because people would have an incentive to get out of paying by claiming to be sick when they're not, or get out of paying by going to the doctor for trivial reasons.
For the system to work, there can't be any monetary incentive to "game" the system. The system has to be viewed from all angles, and cheating and other abuses have to be eliminated from the point of view of incentive.
Re:Well.. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it's actually about high time somebody asked this question.
It is indeed. And the answer is clear. Medicine and medical research must not be driven by market economics.
That medicine emerged as a major profit making industry in the 20th Century was due to a transitional phase in science and health care, wherein most things could not be cured, but treatment was huge business opportunity.
Some of the most dramatic improvements in U.S., and world, health in the 20th Century was in the development of vaccines which were one of the cheapest interventions also. But what gets little attention is that this was always a government and charitable foundation activity, not a business, and not profit making.
Health care must be a service available to everyone, with government taking the lead role in supplying it. There is plenty of room for business in the delivery process, but profit must not be allowed to drive health care decisions. Period.
Re:Well.. (Score:5)
The real question is, if finding a cure is not a sustainable business model. What is wrong with your business model?
My father gave me his old table saw it is from the 1950's it still works, The company that made the saw is still around, and they still make table saws. You would think if you made such a quality device that once everyone who has a table saw, you wouldn't be able to sell them anymore.
However, there are new things such as new safety features (this 1950's table saw is a death trap even beyond the blade, there are exposed belts, an exposed motor that seems to be a good bump away from sucking in the power cord...) There as well smaller sizes, or larger sizes, the ability to get better angles, to keep the material straighter, or make it easier to replace the blade.
A company who makes a cure for a disease will one make a lot of upfront money from people demanding the cure. Which they can reinvest into finding the next condition that needs to be cured. It will be a long time for all problems to be cured.
In the meantime the general population who is now healthier will be working and expanding the economy even further.
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There is no guarantee your improvement on a table saw, will be wanted by anyone.
There is a significantly better chance however. That is the root issue here. Medical science is a much riskier investment than something like manufacturing table saws. The market and solution for that table saw is more well understood, can be better defined as to what people need and want, and incremental improvements can yield large profits for minimal investment.
Medical research on the other hand has very little certainty with all three of those things without manipulating what they give to the market.
Honesty is a Great Service (Score:3)
This statement of what should be obvious is a great service. They are saying what we have suspected for quite some time. That the for profit biotech business model is very likely against the best interests of individuals and society in circumstances where there could be a cure for disease.
Society and individuals have great interests in curing people at least cost. Biotechs clearly have the contrary interest of creating treatments that create dependency and not cures. Having this stated succinctly is the
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Re:Well.. (Score:4, Informative)
On one hand, they have their investors to consider.
But on the other hand, they have their investors to consider.
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It seems likely this the business model is sustainable though
They got back teens of billions on the Help treatment. Now they need to use some of that to invent the next one
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Like it or not, a company can only continue doing what it does if it exists.
I like it just fine. Let's destroy Goldman Sachs so it cannot continue doing what it is doing, cheerleading capitalism at all costs.
Yes it is. Indirectly. (Score:5, Informative)
Curing something does not mean you won't sell the same cure to the same person again. Just because you cured HepC, hell, even curing AIDS in a person does not mean they can't get infected again and need your cure again.
The number of diseases that grant lifetime immunity to it after you survived it once is fairly low.
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There's also always a new disease around the corner, so even if you eradicate one there's always new ones coming.
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Just because you cured HepC, hell, even curing AIDS in a person does not mean they can't get infected again and need your cure again.
If there is a cure, then the rate of re-infection will decline, possibly to zero, as the cure is applied to the population. Nobody gets smallpox anymore.
One of the problems with our current medical system is that there is no incentive to develop cheap reliable effective cures.
Re:Yes it is. Indirectly. (Score:5, Insightful)
As we've seen with the measles, all you have to do is rely on idiots to give diseases a renaissance.
And there's no cure for stupidity.
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Yes it is directly too. There's no reason not to cure people even if it is permanent because there's no single injection that cures anyone of everything. To use your example, just because you cured HepC, doesn't mean the person won't be back for more when he gets HepB or AIDS.
We can start about the poor struggling MIC's profitability once people stop lining up for cures.
It is ... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Also, if it ever comes out that you developed a cure and withheld it in the name of profit, your head will rightfully be attached to a pike, which probably won't be good for your sustainability.
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Libertarian answer to this:
"So unless the biotech companies collude with each other there is always the risk that a competitor will produce a cure killing your business, so you had better [Patent it first] first and kill [kill off the entire industry with lawyers]."
Re:It is ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Your caricature is inaccurate. Many Libertarians oppose intellectual property rights. Others support reforms of the existing system.
Libertarian perspectives on intellectual property [wikipedia.org]
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I think I may have found a flaw in your train of thought.
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I trust you realize that this operation depends, rather critically, on the idea that everyone else, particularly your competitors, will see things exactly the same way.
The so-called "most profitable" option is also the riskiest... hope might very well be one of the most important traits we have as a species that can keep us going when outlooks are bad, but it's quite certainly a pretty crappy c
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Thing is it costs a lot of money to develop these treatments, and if they know their competitors are producing a treatment for a particular condition they won't even want to risk throwing money at their own competing product. It's even worse when there is an established treatment already in the market.
Basically the same reason that you don't have a choice of two different cable companies. High costs just to get to offer you the service, in a market that is already saturated.
No collusion needed (Score:2)
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Not exactly. The profit seekers can choose not to invest in research for a cure. But most of the basic research is University or other public funded stuff. So a competitor with less funding may just be slower at putting together the pieces and doing the relevant trials.
That buys you more time to sell treatments.
That's a question (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, bloody idiots.
The longer the person lives the longer he might be a client of various medical/pharmaceutical companies because we're not getting younger and healthier with each passing day.
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Re:That's a question (Score:4, Informative)
No that's not why we don't have an AIDS vaccine, not even close.
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As Megol mentions, no that's not the reason at all.
The first company to develop an effective HIV/AIDS vaccine will make an enormous amount of money quickly.
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And a universal flue vaccine will make a even larger sum of money quickly. Two hundred bucks to never have the flue again, where do I sign up :-)
Stupid Question (Score:2)
For someone from GS to ask such a question, I'm surprised they're still employed there.
I anticipate that they sell the cure at a price that makes it sustainable, or change the model to one where it's like a license... shut it down, or somehow disable it if the income stream stops.
And people wonder why healthcare in the US is so fucking expensive. It's because we don't have any real competition, and one of the primary reasons Obamacare was never going to work. Stop allowing hospitals and pharma hide their
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Indeed, they can "license" the altered genes instead and demand payment for your continued use by living. I am rather disappointed in GS, surely they can be far more evil than even this was.
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Re: Health care != profit (Score:3)
Are you under the delusion that European pharmaceutical companies don't make a profit?
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that just proves that US drug companies could survive even if they were legally moderated.
Re: Health care != profit (Score:2)
I'm not sure what you mean by "legally moderated". US companies have to follow laws. What kind of "legal moderation" is placed on European pharmaceutical companies which isn't placed on American ones? Or, more specifically, which existing European controls are you advocating be brought in for US companies?
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Re: Health care != profit (Score:5, Insightful)
No, and he didn't even imply that. The point is however, that the way medicines are bought here means that the prices of drugs are lower. The companies still make a profit off of them, but we spend overall less money on drugs, because of things like collective bargaining.
Take something like insulin. The price of insulin in the US doubled from 2012 to 2016 [reuters.com], and it's not because the product itself has change or consumption has skyrocketed. Quoting the article:
And one of the 3 main manufacturers of insulin is Novo Nordisk, a Danish pharmacompany. So yes, European pharma companies are raking in a lot of money thanks to in no small part the american medical system. Now keep in mind, this is not some new wonder drug, insulin has been around for decades at this point, the manufacturing process has been honed down and is extremely efficient. A study from 2017 [businessinsider.com] estimated the cost of production to be as follows:
Note: the siggested figures there are not the costs of manufacturing, they're suggested price-points at which the companies would still make a profit on the product. And the actual numbers are global medians. In the US, the average price for a year's supply is now around $5700 dollars a year (from the previous link). Depending on the type of insulin, that's a markup of anywhere from 100 % to around 640 %. On a life-saving chemical that people depend on daily. That's insane. This is only possible because even though there's competition in theory, the highly more privatized nature of the US pharma/medical sector has allowed for all the three major players to raise their costs in tandem, while simultaneously making no significant changes/improvements on the drug itself.
The commercialized nature of the system means it doesn't optimize itself for cost-efficiency or availability, it optimizes for maximal profit. Insulin is cheap to make, so obviously the companies sell it for very cheap in countries with lower incomes or just a better regulated health care system. This
Re: Health care != profit (Score:4, Informative)
There's a lot of misinfo and half truths in there ... I'll address some of the bigger ones:
1. Collective bargaining benefits exist in the US also. Insurance companies pay much lower prices than those cited, exactly because of their bargaining power. The costs you're discussing are costs outside of the insurance system, and as such aren't really comparable to anything in nations which control all sale/distribution.
2. Insulin has changed significantly over the years, and the prices for newer products are therefore higher. The newest generation of insulin is far safer and more effective than the stuff being made back in the 1930s. If you want some of the older stuff you can get it way cheaper in many markets.
3. Looking at solely the cost of production and then saying that "a 100% markup is insane" is just ridiculous. There are many other costs associated with these products, not the least of which are regulatory costs, and R&D. Pharmaceutical R&D in particular is insanely expensive. While the costs for R&D on insulin specifically may not be as high as some others, companies use profits from one product to offset general research costs, not just development costs of that one line.
4. I don't think you understand how patents work. You don't get to hang on to a patent for longer just by making small changes. You can probably get a new patent for your changed product, but the old patent will still expire. Once it expires, others are free to copy your old product. The issue in the US is that, if you want to copy an older form of insulin for example, you still have to jump through the regularity hoops to get your product approved for sale by the FDA. You also still have the usual marketing costs to try and make people aware of your cheaper product, AND you'll probably have to work to convince doctors to actually prescribe your cheaper version rather than the better, more expensive product. All of that is going to raise your costs quite a bit higher than just those "production" costs you were talking about earlier. The easiest way to get more generics on the US market would be to get the FDA out of the way by lowering standards or automatically accepting generics which are approved in other markets ... but then you're potentially sacrificing safety for speed (see Thalidomide, for example).
All that said, if you think that you can compete by making an older, cheaper form of insulin ... what's stopping you? Go fire up a Kickstarter to get some initial funding, get your business set up, and then maybe hit up some of the charitable foundations for funding. If you had a workable plan to bring low cost generic insulin to the US market (and actually succed in selling it) I'm sure you could get plenty of startup funding from, say, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
I hear lots of people like you banging on about the immorality of making money selling medicine, yet none of you seem to be interested in actually doing something about it. The only "solution" you have seems to be price controls, which is wonderful because it allows you to act morally superior without having to actually do anything. Just get the government to fix things for you; that's always the best solution!
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I hear lots of people like you banging on about the immorality of making money selling medicine, yet none of you seem to be interested in actually doing something about it. The only "solution" you have seems to be price controls, which is wonderful because it allows you to act morally superior without having to actually do anything.
The solution is not price controls, the solution is to separate research and manufacturing.
Have research be non-profit, conducted by charities and governments with the results made available to all. Not only would you eliminate the likelihood of profit being chosen over the wellbeing of patients, but you could also increase collaboration as researchers would no longer be competing against each other and wouldn't have any incentive to keep their research secret.
Pharmaceutical companies should purely be about
Re: Health care != profit (Score:5, Informative)
50 year Type 1 diabetic here.
> Insulin has changed significantly over the years
The purity improved drastically since its discovery in 1921, which is how animal source insulins became safer and less likely to cause sensitivities, basically allergies, that reduced their effectiveness profoundly. The patent for insulin itself was made public domain by its inventor. The release of "human" insulin, and the patents for making it, were an effective attempt to get new patents, not to provide medical benefit from a natural chemical which cannot be patented. There seems to be no measurable medical benefit to the human insulin molecule over animal sources, and there are some reports of medical deficits with it.
The folks at Novo are always *really excited* by the insulins. But the short acting human insulin only replaces the older regular insulin, and its speed of action is overwhelmed by the modern glucometer use and by the quick action of delivering insulin with an insulin pump. The longer acting human insulin based Lantus simply replaces NPH or UltraLente, older and cheaper ways to make insulin last longer. There is *zero* net benefit from the modern human insulins over the older and vastly cheaper animal based insulins. Using e. coli to make insulin doesn't actually improve it in any measurable way.
> The newest generation of insulin is far safer and more effective than the stuff being made back in the 1930s.
That is a false equivalency. Compared to the 1930's sure. Improvements in insulin effectively ceased in the 1970's with the last upgrade to "U-100" concentrations of insulin. The developments for insulin since then have been like the "new" and "improved" labels on detergent, or like marking farmer's market produce as "non-GMO". Very exciting and an excuse to charge more, but involving no useful change in the product and likely untrue.
Yes, the "human" insulins were exciting. But using the human rather than the animal insulins has no demonstrable medical benefit, and costs roughly 10 times as much. Insulin is *grotesquely* expensive due to the captive market and the basically fraudulent "upgrades" over the last 30 years.. A classic example of drug companies continuing to blow smoke up our asses is seen at the "article" at https://www.adwdiabetes.com/ar... [adwdiabetes.com]. I've not seen such a nonsensical puff piece since Sarah Palin campaigned for Trump.
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Pharma companies make less profit in Europe, including the American ones selling drugs here. For example, in the UK most people use the tax-funded NHS, and relatively few have private healthcare that will pay for expensive treatments. So if they want to sell a drug to the UK market, they have to negotiate with the NHS and they don't pay commercial rates.
It's still profitable so they still do it. Might as well make some money rather than nothing. It's far from perfect but we don't see the same price inflatio
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There's still the problem that European health systems, too, need to rely on for-profit businesses to provide drugs and stuff, and they need to be sustainable, i.e. profitable, to survive.
A problem that has no solution within the confinements of the world's existing economic operating system.
for profit or non-profit it is the same (Score:2)
The main problem is looking at health care as a profit driven business in the first place. Take a look at Europe / Scandinavia for examples of much better models.
If it were true that that alone makes it more likely to find cures then Europe/Scandinavia would be coming up with cures that Americans could then just benefit from.
Whether it be a "non-profit" or for profit company there seems to be a problem in the economics and incentives of cures versus treatments. There is just going to be more money in treatments than there will be in cures. I think there is something more fundamental that needs to be recognized there that affects either type of business model. An
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There's nothing different in Europe / Scandinavia. The only difference is where the profits come from, the sick person, or the taxes they paid. Healthcare is still a profit driven business, even if the person filling out the prescription and the person paying for the drugs is covered by socialised healthcare.
This is exactly what the crazy people have said (Score:3)
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Curing cancer is a little different and would be highly profitable. You would wipe out all your competitors that also compete against you in other drug areas. Cancer is also something where curing it once will not prevent you from getting it again and again and again and keep needing a different customized cure. Also a cure from cancer could be sold at a truly staggering price and it would still be worth it so you manufacture far less of a complex drug substance at a MUCH higher price per unit.
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I actually have said this before. Pick your $dreaded_disease and it would not surprise me in the slightest if 100% proof surfaced that $some_evil_company had the cure for ages, but stuffed in a safe somewhere in lieu of just putting people on maintenance. I'm not saying I believe this, but it wouldn't shock me if someone showed me proof that it were true.
My other thought is though, as the saying goes, three people can keep a secret if two are dead. How could someone of good conscience keep a cure for say
Not curing them isnâ(TM)t sustainable (Score:2)
You have to keep paying off everyone that comes up with a cure? That doesnt seem sustainable.
Inevitable (Score:2)
The US health care system is fucking awful (unless you're in the 1%). We need single payer now.
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> We need single payer now.
No, big health/pharma already owns the government, so any change would only be to their benefit, regardless of what you call it.
We need the foxes out of the hen house first..
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Drug companies already don;t (Score:3)
The drug companies already avoid cures, as that would eliminate their customers.
They just make drugs that temporarily suppress symptoms (and often introduce others) just so they have a repeat customer base.
New business model (Score:5, Interesting)
There are two choices, and they have their detractors:
1. Socialism: We all pay for this and enjoy the benefits of a healthy society.
2. Ferengi: Mortgage. Because the treatment works so well, it is also expensive, and the only way to finance it is by taking a lifetime loan. If you need a second treatment, better take a second mortgage then.
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2B we all pay for an inmate to get that treatment + the cost of locking them up. As under the law it's cruel and unusual Punishment to not have healthcare
Wrong question. Wrong approach. (Score:2)
They're looking at new advances in medicine the wrong way. These fantastic new cures rely on a model of customizing the cure for the patient. So, rather than selling a particular drug, these investors/manufacturers should look at it as selling Cure-O-Matic machines which when loaded with the patient's DNA and some parameters then produce customized drugs. Such machines will need consumables, reagents, spare parts, and programming. That's the new source of revenue.
How about option C (Score:2)
What about patents? (Score:2)
Drugs are patented for 20 years, it means that in the ideal case where your competitor didn't find something better your "recurring revenue" is going to be severely cut down by cheap generics after your patent expire.
If you develop a cure however, you are going to completely destroy your competition, and get a good backlog of already ill patients to treat. Sure, it won't last, but neither will your patent. So the ones who aren't getting rich are the ones who make generics, you get to keep all the profits.
Yes. It is. (Score:2)
Because there are a host of medical conditions out there that will ALWAYS require preventative/palliative care.
Blowing out as much in the way of disease/etc as possible with actual CURES stops the medical apparatus from being overwhelmed. Especially by serious conditions that require extensive (and expensive), ongoing medical support.
It allows us to "right size" our medical industry. Rather than building out this huge industry that has to stretch to cover ongoing care for every conceivable medical issue H
Business or Taxes? Choose. (Score:2)
That this question is asked lays bare the fundamental question of health care. The fact is, care costs money so how does it get paid for? Either healthcare is a business or it is supported by the people for the people (taxes thru government).
This question, as revolting as it is, simply puts in stark relief the reality of the choices.
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Sustainable Business Model ? (Score:2)
Remember that coworker that protects their work? (Score:2)
Remember that coworker that tries to keep everything secretive about their work to protect their job? Then the world comes along and changes without them, forcing them on the street because they were so focused on protecting what they have that they didn't invest time in learning anything new. This is literally how that sounds.
The problem is that regardless of automation, there will always be something else pushing us forward, new skills to learn, more problems to solve. Curing illnesses would be great i
Re: (Score:2)
This right here... (Score:2)
This is, in one quote, exactly the reason why it should be illegal for medicine to be for profit. Prioritizing profit over life is the very definition of evil.
johnny mnemonic? (Score:2)
This sounds like the exact plot for the movie Johnny Mnemonic [imdb.com]. The "black shakes" was affecting much of the population, due to excessive exposire to technology, and the "big pharma" / pharmacorp were keeping the cure a secret because "it was more profitable to treat the symptoms than to cure the patient"
As I recall, it didn't end well for PharmaCorp.
In a free market, absolutely (Score:2)
Pharma companies already know this (Score:2)
There is a reason that the big pharma companies are spending all their research money to develop drugs that relieve symptoms temporarily, but don't actually cure anything. Think statins, impotence pills for men, and various skin nostrums to improve your complexion. These are all big money-makers and none of them cure anything. Rather, they alleviate symptoms temporarily, and require the patient to continue buying them for the rest of his or her life to enjoy their benefits. Now, this is a good business
the great paradox (Score:2)
As long as companies have a vested interest in treating a chronic condition without curing it, we in the US are doomed to live with them. The longer term they are as chrnic illnesses, the better.
I can't help wondering how much money and pain Jonas Salk saved the world. There were 20,000 to 57,000 cases of polio in the US each year until the vaccine was in
Cheese and whine (Score:2)
Sounds to me the problem isn't capitalism so much as it's lazy people (e.g. Bankers) who believe after they produce something they are entitled to sit idle and keep getting paid for doing nothing in return.
Good for People, Bad for Business (Score:2)
Look at the common cold: Billions each year to treat the symptoms, but if it was cured, Big Pharma might suffer horribly.
Ditto for Caner, Diabetes, the Flu and Allergies.
This then becomes a shining (sci-fi based) example of Cures for the Rich, and the rest for everyone else.
Was bailing out ... (Score:2)
DUH! (Score:2)
The real question is (Score:2)
how much money is enough?
The principals in a biotech company made a couple billion $ and then ran out of patients? Boo-hoo.
If you develop a cure for one disease, you may run out of patients who need that cure, but there are always other diseases that need to be cured. If you don't want to risk your money on the development of another cure, retire to your private island and let someone else do the work.
Re:Answer right here. (Score:5, Informative)
As opposed to the rest of the 1st world countries which manage to have affordable and working health care systems. Canada, France, UK etc all have single payer systems with working hospitals and better health outcomes at a fraction of the price.
Re: (Score:2)
What you, and the commentators above your post, don't understand is that American health care industry is not there to help you, but to make a profit out of you. Helping you is just a consequence of this method of generating money. Whatever is income positive
Re:Answer right here. (Score:4, Interesting)
"Cancer survival rates" are a baloney statistic. What matters are mortality rates. If I diagnose a cancer earlier and the treatment does exactly nothing, my survival rate improves while the mortality rate stays the same. In fact, if I can diagnose false positives, my survival rate looks even better while mortality stays constant. The more harmless lumps I remove from the breasts of healthy women, the better and better my survival statistics look.
Measured by mortality rate the US is not substantially better or worse than any other rich industrial nation, including the UK. It is a myth that the US system is better at all.
Re: (Score:3)
...and that is the reason why we don't have a cure for cancer etc.
This is simply bullshit. You may not like the treatment but most forms of cancer can be successfully treated.
As long as we accept that the medication for keeping people alive is as expensive as it is there is no economical drive for curing.
Funny as vaccination is one way to preemptively "cure" diseases and all Scandinavian countries vaccinate for instance against HPV which can lead to cancer. So how did that vaccine get developed?
btw. Scandinavia is better but is far from perfect, much of our medico has been sold so now we pay 500% more for medication than we would if we have kept them.
Medico? Also citation needed (and you'll obviously not provide any).
Politicians have been cutting the health budget so we are now in a situation where we look at the "do this patient need to survive or would it be better if he/she died" problem.
That is obviously wrong. It sounds like you are one of those that can't accept that someone will die and that it would be more dignified not