Hoxhatastic.

everybody laughs...

the real problem is..
if the market is small, and the high price unstable....
there is no profit for generic ones to come into play....

it's a **** move...
as there is no clear counter to it except regulation...

Interestingly, several years ago I proposed a scenario where an inventor found a cure for cancer and turned down a 3 billion payment offer from the government, holding out for ten billion. When I suggested that they forcibly make him take the offer there was an outcry on this site.

I'm not going to sell you short, David...

But [censored] exactly.

I remember it but it's defeated my limited patience for searching.

Anyone else willing and able?

This

And the vitriolic reaction on social media makes me cringe a bit. Just another guy taking full (albeit unethical) advantage of the system. The fact that there isn't legislation to prevent it is the worrying aspect, but as op mentioned my first thought was the legitimate financial r&d recoup, and then I wondered if there was anything to legislate against at all

Pass legislation that a price of a drug that has been settled at some level for many years cannot rise more than 100%-200% (to be determined) per year. That is enough time for the market to counter the trend by producing it more efficiently.

Pass also legislation that those that get the drug and cannot afford it anymore as a result of such raises (with some easy proof of this) deserve an instant refund from a system that is created for that purpose where all drug companies contribute something like 0.1% of their profits (only the profitable ones) to fund it (or whatever very little this ends up being to be estimated properly for those cases that cannot be insured and any hospital that gets in similar trouble).

Pass also legislation to elevate the taxation (nothing huge) of any profitable drug company that raised drug prices (and reduce their taxes if they decreased prices in certain products, so develop a score for the net effect per profitable company based on what they did past year).

Finally avoid all of the above and pass legislation to start building scientific society and end this bs series of problems.

You could pass a law making the price for these kinds of drugs based on ability to pay. Maybe 10% of your net worth with Medicare and private insurers on the hook for the first $10,000. So if Donald Trump needs the treatment his bill is around $1 billion.


PairTheBoard

That law will fail because the poor people with the disease will give their drug to Trump and get paid eg 100k over their own cost for it. Some will prefer to not get treated as needed as often like take 2 out of 3 and the 1/3 of their treatment goes to the Trump buyer intermediary agent that gives it to Trump. So he finds 3 people and they get paid 100k each for their 1/3 of dosage each.

Or Trump can create his own pharmaceutical company for 1 bil to create his own drug and the rest is pure profit for him selling to others or developing other drugs. After all developing an already known drug probably can be done with 1 bil. Many rich guys can combine even and create a 300 bil start up with the best brains in the planet just to create the drugs the rich need only. I bet you can find 1000 billionaires in the world that have 1 in their family with issues or themselves even.


Also on pure fairness argument its not ok to punish the rich for being rich in such excessive manner. Taxation that is elevated is ok for them already. Creative taxation is even better. See next.

What i would do is tax only 10% all the rich guys that used their profits (at least 40% of their profits) (each year) to create new companies to give jobs to people in the country of their origin (or the origin of their largest source of income). They own of course these companies. If then these companies made profits i would also tax them 10% if the profits were used to create even more new companies or to expand current ones or offer benefits to the employed people there. So create a big successful company that way, you keep the vast majority of its profits too, as long as you keep finding jobs to people with these profits, otherwise you pay the regular tax 40% or whatever it is.

So for example if you are rich and pay 40% on taxes i will take that down to 10% if you use that 40% of your profits each year to fund the creation of new jobs in creative positive net value to society fields ( that improve society metrics by definition). We can search what these companies might be (eg fund fusion research, new drugs, new transportation systems, new batteries, new space propulsion, new solar cells, CO2 removal from atmosphere methods, Space elevators, Space mining companies, infrastructure build up everywhere, self sufficient high tech homes for poor people where those building them are the poor people themselves after being trained or using their already available education/skills etc). Nobody that wants to be employed is left out.


None of these are communism or socialism or Utopia by the way. But they are the transition to scientific society that doesnt punish success or the wealthy , simply demands they are not enemies of society with their choices or lack of choices (the very society that made them rich).

Socialists, communists and utopians ITT. Ugghh. 3-way road to nowhere.

Price based on ability to pay has been a long standing tradition in medicine.


PairTheBoard

Life is an infinite-way road to infinite-end nowhere. Might as well respect your own proclivities in the meantime.

Indeed, enjoy the beautiful chaos of capitalism, while it lasts.

If this effect is real it's actually a plus for the idea. It incentivizes competition which is what's needed for these orphan drugs. And competition is the mothers milk of a free market.

The pharmaceutical companies get paid what they need to keep up R&D. And I don't see this as a disincentive for people getting rich. Just the opposite in fact. They know they need to get even richer to balance the contingent liability of insuring themselves for certain types of disease. Yet it doesn't cause anyone to bankrupt themselves for their cure.

PairTheBoard

But he is too lazy and greedy to even form the company. He will simply give the 3 guys 100k each (and not even 1 mil, even if he could afford it because that's his style and if you give him attitude he will find one that will do it for 10k even) and he will be covered and the little guy will be getting 2/3 of his dosage which is not terrible given the 100k he gets for his family say in his mind. So money forces the system to a state the poor people will be exploited again, this time paying with their health in small pieces. Some may even make it with 2/3 and if we create a 4/5th model its even closer to not suffering real consequences.

I'm pretty sure you're smart enough to figure procedures to stop such abuse. I also think you could come up with more ideas than me for why this is a good idea if you wanted to.


PairTheBoard

For as smart of a guy as you obviously are, you still use these adjectives. Can you not consult Zimbardo and co at the Stanford psych dept (yes, I'm referencing the infamous '71 prison experiment) to get better?

Peter Joseph made a youtube video lately challenging the entire world to answer 3 questions about the sustainability of the market system along with sustainability of the Earth, if we continue with market capitalism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xGyKuyGhaE
I highly recommend watching it and if you could attempt to answer the 3 questions.
You will see that it is market capitalism that is leading nowhere.

David Harvey a marxist professor argued the same, how 3% compound growth that is needed for capitalism to work is going to run into problems looking for new investment in a few decades. What the capitalists are investing in is buying derivatives on insurance of derivatives. In other words, not investing in anything productive.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkWvx1QQ76c

heh. espousing degrowth on a poker forum which caters to the libertarian publishers of 2+2 and like-minded sorts? I'm with you, but good luck!!

This incident is symptomatic of the plague that is Intellectual Property Law. Generic manufacturers could probably synthesize this drug immediately if they didn't have to develop their own synthesis procedure.

I was hoping some Libertarians would try to argue against the points made by Rikers itt at post #27 for the laugh.

Yes i can certainly come up with a police state that you take the drugs only under supervision or each drug has a verification system that is hard to tamper with or you only take the drug inside a particular room and are tested you did so etc. Pretty soon i have created a world that is no longer scientific society and its North Korea.

I think there are better easier solutions. Otherwise why not force also the rich guys to pay more for their food and clothes and water even if they buy the same kind of goods like the avg guy. None of this seems reasonable. Arent all people seen equal in terms of basic rights and services? Plus you would require instant checks of one's wealth to issue basic care. That is a systematic invasion of privacy it seems. The system must not know exactly how much money each one has (to do that it must keep track of all your spending every day of your life to keep proper accurate sum up to date so you collapse privacy) only that annual income is acquired properly.

funny enough circuit brakers disabled arbitrage traders to profit as it would cancel their trades (and reduce volatility); while it was designed to reduced volatility it actually imposed a cost by having more frequent crashes...

I don't think it would require a police state. For example, we don't need a police state to stop people in the U.S.A. from selling their organs to the rich.

This is not for basic care. Only for the super high priced type treatments that bankrupt most people and will bankrupt Medicare eventually.

As I pointed out before, there is a long tradition in this country that cost of medical care be adjustable based on ability to pay. This is just a special case of that tradition to suit new and extreme conditions brought on by recent advances in medicine. Your slippery slope argument is just silly.


PairTheBoard

I dont think its more silly than taking the price to 1 bil for a billionaire when the system is a screw up already if this is what it needs to get those drugs produced at affordable prices. Such system needs demolishing not fixing that way.

When you tax people properly according to wealth and order of magnitude of income and how bad are at using that wealth (my proposal for rewarding lower taxation if they do great things with it) you already have all you need to combat this problem with legislation like i proposed without bankrupting research.

I realize that we can agree that full medical costs coverage that usually is insured and covered for middle class and poor people in many countries can be required in full or higher % by the truly rich but not at such excessive levels. I mean if a heart transplantation costs 200k (i dont know exactly) you can ask that a millionaire or billionaire pay all of it directly from their assets rather than have medicare pay for it. If their post operation care stay costs 50k in their room for many days have them pay for it.

But if you wanted to take the drug to such levels as 10% of their assets it would seem absurd for the really very rich and they would find a way to by pass that bs. I happen to think 10% of his assets like 1 bil can be used for a ton of much better things than drugs!!!

I do not value human life under attack of rare disease as much as human progress overall that impacts everyone and the special diseases treatment eventually. It is more important for me to develop fusion or better solar and batteries in every building in the planet and stop climate change, end poverty and offer education to all (and that way also end overpopulation which is the result of ignorance) as soon as possible than to cure cancer if they both cost the same.

Yes indeed and feel free to tell me i have cancer tomorrow and learn that i will die because of it. I stand by my position even then. Others like me and better will exist and they need to have solutions in our screwed up world not another route to overpopulation. Saving 1% more people from rare diseases mostly later in their lives is not exactly such an important priority vs other ones.

Of course for scientific society all these are priorities and it will do what it takes to save people that need treatment. But it will get there by having initial emphasis on the truly important priorities. And not losing a small fraction of the population to rare diseases is not as important as cheaper cleaner energy that effectively saves 100s of times more people and affects quality of lives.

So no, if you want a rare drug that costs 10k per prescription to be paid in full by the rich guy and only 5-10% or nothing from the poor i agree. If you want to tax the rich guy overall on their profits more than the poor unless they do great things with their money and use that money among other things to fund that drug research program i agree also. Offer many breaks in expenses to poor people vs the rich all the time everywhere.

What i dont agree is asking a guy to pay 1 bil for what actually costs 10k or 1k or 100k just because they have it.

Find a better number to make your case than 10% of a billionaire's wealth.

I am not willing to help the drug companies continue to play their screwed up game chopping the wealth of rich people in such reckless fashion to justify the huge prices companies may want if i know how to fix the system with that money from the rich in a much better manner that wont leave the system still corrupt and weak and vulnerable as today. When the state takes money from the rich it better be doing great things with it. It better be competing with the rich in what great things they can do with that money.