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Comment by FooBarWidget | Hacker News Reader

From what I have read, the problem is that antibiotic development is not profitable. If a new antibiotic gets developed then it will be out on the shelf as a last-resort antibiotic, preventing the developing company from extracting a lot of revenue. And it is more profitable to develop drugs for chronic diseases. So pharmaceutic companies don't bother with antibiotics.

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...displaying a great example of why the free market is not the best way to handle healthcare and medical research. The availability of treatment has everything to do with profit, and little to do with need.

Given the heavy involvement of the state in funding and directing care and research, I don't think anyone would describe healthcare and medical research as a free market.

Yeah but that's more because of lobbying and politics than logical, economic approaches to problems. It's not like when I go to the doctor everyone's incentives are aligned. The insurance company is still actively working against me, just now it's really complicated how they do it due to regulation so only they can play the game and I just have to take their decision until it's worth getting lawyers involved.

Indeed, and that's because free market dynamics are incompatibile with healthcare in obvious and predictable ways.

It's more profitable to develop drugs for chronic diseases because there are a lot more people with chronic diseases than there are people with infections only treatable by antibiotics of last resort, hence there is a lot more need for drugs that treat chronic diseases than there is need for last-resort antibiotics.

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