Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by pinaceae | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

pinaceae

how much is getting cured of cancer at a very young age worth? dying vs. living another 80-90 years?

less than a Tesla? more than a house?

interesting questions arise around immuno-oncology.

should Apple be the most profitable company - or someone that literally cures cancer?

View on HN

> how much is getting cured of cancer at a very young age worth? dying vs. living another 80-90 years? > less than a Tesla? more than a house?

It's worth so much that a person shouldn't be required to pay for it. Like a right.

Whether or not an individual pays for it has nothing to do with the pricing the manufacturer sets. In fact, setting prices becomes even more of a concern when these things are being funded by tax dollars as the government is going to need a way of determining what's reasonable.

When a manufacturer sets the price, they want to recoup the costs and then make a profit on each unit sold.

When a government funds the research, the marginal cost for each unit provided is time and materials, with no profit.

Government funds projects every day that are waste, spending tens, even hundreds of millions of dollars. We can continue to pour money down the F-35 drain but not provide healthcare? Make America Intellectually Honest Again

Anglo-Saxons (in general, not all, but in particular Americans) are so very weird when it comes to the "free market".

IMO (dirty socialist/communist that I am), healthcare is not part of the free market. The industry providing healthcare should be strictly regulated and no benefits allowed.

Also, what's worth healthcare compared to the US DOD spending?

Quite a lot actually. US defense spending in 2014 was $614 billion, 3.5% of GDP. US healthcare spending in 2014 was estimated by the world bank as 17.1% of GDP.

That's total spending, but even in terms of public money, the US is at 8.3% of GDP: larger than Belgium, the UK, Switzerland, Finland, Canada and many others.

>The industry providing healthcare should be strictly regulated and no benefits allowed.

Then how would anyone be interested in launching such a company or working in that industry ?

urg

Some people believe other people to be fundamentally good and not interested only in personal enrichment (financial enrichment I mean here).

But some of you make me doubt that.

But why are some people quantum physicists researchers ? Why are there mathematicians and biologists ? They don't earn much.

Your line of thinking is so stupid and self-centered, it really makes me want to use swear words.

Public research is rather different from launching a company. It's not exactly the same hassle nor honors. There's some difference between understanding the world and selling stuff. Research rarely has products in mind, at least it's not its primary goal, unlike companies. They also don't have clients, which is a central thing for companies (and not the most enjoyable one).

And guess the reason why many researchers end up in private companies ?

Thanks for the insult, I thought this community was supposed to be mature.

This would certainly be possible but would require a major change in gov't research funding, including many extra billions for drug R&D, "productionizing" research, and large scale clinical trials; since a "no benefits allowed" industry wouldn't be investing to create drugs like this one.

I still think it might be best if government funds the research and then allows anyone with the capability to use it. In other words, no patents. There would be competition and the price would come down. The big problem I have with this suggestion is that I don't believe in governments ability to do anything cost effectively - even funding research - but I might be wrong.

Dean Baker, an economist, has written here and there about alternative ways to pay for drug research:

"There are clearly better and worse ways to structure a system of government financed research. For example, the Free Market Drug Act, a bill recently introduced in the U.S. Congress, called for establishing a set of competing government corporations that would be evaluated at periodic intervals (e.g. 10 years) for the quality of their work. The worst performers would be put out of business with new ones created to take their place."

More here:

http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue32/Baker32.htm

http://cepr.net/publications/briefings/testimony/drugs-are-c...

Considering the number of poorly performing gov't programs, I'm sure the "quality of their work" would be based on things other that actual output. Nepotism and buying votes are probably more likely.

>> It's worth so much that a person shouldn't be required to pay for it. Like a right.

It can't be a right. That would mean someone has an obligation to provide it. I would say it's worth so much that a monopoly on it should not be allowed.

If you show up in a random hospital with an injury or disease, they are already obligated to provide care, it's just you're directly responsible for the bill.

The individual shouldn't be paying.

In the US it actually doesn't work this way. Hospitals are only obligated to provide care for people whose lives are in immediate danger. Once the patient is stabilized, the hospital is free to kick them out. There are a handful of exceptions and many hospitals will provide care out of charity, but don't expect to get a half-million dollar cancer treatment unless you have health insurance or really good credit.

> It can't be a right. That would mean someone has an obligation to provide it.

By that logic, voting can't be a right, because someone has to register voters, run the polling booths, count the votes, etc.

If the health care system was mostly staffed by unpaid volunteers, I might agree. As it stands health care is 17% of US GDP (10% global) and growing.

Society has an obligation to provide it, just as it does drinking water.

I get a water bill every month...

Also, I know folks on well water that live outside of the city, society does not provide their drinking water.

Also, There is Flint MI.

YOU get a bill. Society pays for public drinking fountains, homeless shelters, section 8 housing, etc... where water is provided for the less fortunate at a scaled societal contribution (or free).

Flint MI is an absolute crisis and the government has stepped in, the state of Michigan sued the city, and there have been over a dozen criminal indictments. Multiple governments have stepped in to repair the obligation of clean drinking water, and to punish those who failed the citizens.

You got it backwards. There is no obligation to provide drinking water. In fact most places where the city puts it in they force people to use the provided water and NOT put in wells. Then they send a bill.

This is bonkers logic. It's wrong to coerce someone into providing the cure, but it's right to coerce someone out of forming a monopoly?

An IP-based monopoly can't exist unless the society enforces the concept of that IP, e.g. coerces anyone to not make the treatment without a valid licence.

The monopoly isn't made by the company, it's a conditional and time-limited offer given by the society to promote the creation of such things.

> how much is getting cured of cancer at a very young age worth? dying vs. living another 80-90 years?

A tough question, made tougher by the side effects of doing so. $500k per infusion pays for quite a few mostly-healthy low-income uninsured kids to get basic pediatric care. The US healthcare system is already priced too high for a lot of people - I pay $2,002.25/month for my family.

> should Apple be the most profitable company - or someone that literally cures cancer?

Should healthcare really be a for-profit endeavour?

on the latter:

is it more ethical to profit from curing a disease or from causing it?

Pfizer vs. Red Bull.

and if you can't become a billionaire from curing things, how will this sector attract the same kind of talent/genius like other industries?

Biotech vs. Quants vs. SnapChat

The US federal government has basically standardized, in terms of public health and safety measures, on treating doing those interventions that will save lives if they will save lives for less than $7.5 million on average (it's been going up over time). This is for stuff like lead abatement, public safety commercials, pollution controls, etc.

That doesn't apply to medicine but it looks like this treatment is well worth it compared to the money the government spends, e.g., cleaning up lead paint. And since the number I gave is for an average life when saving a child we should be willing to spend more.

"should Apple be the most profitable company - or someone that literally cures cancer?"

Nobody needs an Apple product. Life is a basic need.

They deserve to be profitable but in a way that doesn't require bleeding dry the cancer patients themselves.

getting downvoted for asking questions.

HN sometimes really can fuck right off.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com