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Goldman Sachs Asks: 'Is Curing Patients a Sustainable Business Model?' (cnbc.com)
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.
"Slashdot asks: Is posting fresh stories a sustainable business model?"
Ezekiel 23:20
Time to blacklist anyone working at goldman sachs from getting any sort of cure.
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.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If your competitors can't. If you develop a treatment and your competitor has a cure then your business is flushed down the toilet while your competitor gets rich. 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 get there first and kill their business instead.
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.
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 costs. Stop the ambulance chasers from driving up the insurance. Get Wall Street out of our healthcare.
Just another day in Paradise
Nationalize cures, allow slow torture to stay privatized. Then advertise the hell out of it so your citizens know where to go so that they can continue to enjoy productive, meaningful, and satisfying lives.
Think of it as the opposite of the current big-business financial model, wherein they privatize gains and socialize the losses.
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.
At digital age, I'm expecting a link to primary source. At least a screen cap of the paragraph where this quote is from.
Curing people once seems a valid business model for surgeons.
More people get sick.
Maybe not a business model for exploding profits over time, but a good steady business that helps people.
of course the sales of this drug would peak at the start and then slow down to a sustained level. This is a new drug. Everyone who has Hep C is going to line up to get it resulting in a spike. As the backlog of patients is exhausted, you will only be able to sell newly diagnosed patients for a mere 4 billion a year. I will happily settle for a mere 4 billion a year in sales.
Many of us here probably know people who convinced that a cure for all cancers already exists, but somebody big (the government, pharma, maybe both) doesn't want it out because the revenue stream from current expensive treatments will dry up. This just feeds into their arguments that big business is against us all.
You have to keep paying off everyone that comes up with a cure? That doesnt seem sustainable.
shouldn't be a private enterprise. How does it profit a company to cure anyone?
This is the inevitable logical conclusion of for-profit health care. I'm not at all surprised.
The US health care system is fucking awful (unless you're in the 1%). We need single payer now.
I don't respond to AC's.
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.
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.
"Everybody's naked underneath" -- The Doctor
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.
No matter what your product, planning to sell the same thing forever doesn't work, you'll run out of customers or competitors will paste you. The key is to keep developing new products and always keeping a step ahead of competition.
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.
...we now have Health as a Service. Brought to you, no surprise, by Goldman Sachs.
-This signature is strictly to prevent comments ending with questions or propositions.-
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 Homo Sapiens is capable of manifesting.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
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.
Computer modeling for biotech drug manufacturing is HARD!
...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 treating that person.
Medical ethics is a thing and knowingly causing suffering when that suffering can't cure or enable a longer/more dignified life goes against that ethic.
I am actually from Scandinavia end I live in Scandinavia.
Scandinavia isn't a country, your generalization is wrong. I frankly doubt you are telling the truth given this should be obvious to someone living in a Scandinavian country.
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.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
I wonder the same thing about bureaucrats. It's interesting to me that with all the money and effort poured into solving e.g. poverty, drug addiction, etc. that not much seems to have improved since the Great Society.
Perhaps that's because doing well at your job could potentially put you out of a job.
Maybe not. But then it shouldn't be a business, maybe ? Get it off the business and let the state handle it. It will save a huge amount of money for everyone in the long run. To say nothing of saving lives.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
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 in that perhaps we could learn how to cure them better or focus on curing other things, or prolonging life. One of the single impactful innovations at the end of the twentieth century was a boner pill.
If you build your business model around prolonging a problem instead of fixing it, the hope is that capitalism would suggest otherwise. Yet this is where one of the inherent evils of capitalism pops up its ugly head and says, "No, we need more money, keep things broken just a bit longer."
To conclude, you can say that curing something is less profitable, but that's a busted business model that's designed to fail unless you can ensure that no one will come up with a cure on the cheap.
Place something witty here
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.
You say that it's capitalism that's the problem: I would argue that it is socialism and entrenched bureaucracy that is the problem. Things stagnate, and then capitalism (some hot-shot startup) comes along and "disrupts" the status quo.
This is precisely why patents are granted. Duh.
This sounds like the exact plot for the movie Johnny Mnemonic. 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.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
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 kind of frank discussion we need.
The answer isn't immediately clear, since there is nothing wrong in finding treatments that make people's lives better. And if there is "no cure" then a treatment is better than nothing.
If cures are being ignored because resources are all going toward predatory dependency inducing treatments (like the opiods), then government regulation that encourages more free market competition to push the business interest further towards making cheap cures and better treatments should be on the table. In a free market would you rather pay a doctor to cure you or to just treat your symptoms? If there is only one doctor in town, then good luck. If there is only one doctor in town because government makes it so onerous to become a doctor or stay in private practice... then shame on the government. Likewise many government regulations appear to benefit big pharma and big biotech. Yes quality is of great importance when lives are on the line, but innovation is also of great importance when lives are on the line and we see areas of stagnation in medical advancement with only expensive treatments making it to market.
Also on the table should be treating the discovery of cures as a critical public interest to be funded with more government dollars instead of private. Government funded research has a mixed track record also. But here too there should be a big enough pool of money that it allows for sustained competition between the Universities and non-profit, or even for-profits getting grants.
The government should be in the business of making sure we have a healthy and efficient free market and stepping in with regulation, policing, and even some money when we don't.
I cant believe that the management couldnt anticipate that their product was like a movie, initial sales peaked, followed by a sharp decline. Now just like movie productions they should be satisfied with royalties and the prestige that comes with it.
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. And something that the government should recognize so we can find ways to get to more cures.
In the case of a non-profit business model that doesn't mean people aren't making a living doing some sort of work... that means more money for them or more people getting more money.
The for-profit aspect just layers additional mouths to feed (investors) on top of the people that work there and the interests on any loans. Think of "for-profit" just as loans with interest rates that depend on how good the revenue is compared with expenses. Depending on the terms of the shares and how much money is taken out of the business then it can be onerous, but so too can terms on loans.
In an unregulated market, competitors could compete directly on price and quality of care.
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 model. Just ask Pfizer how much they have made from their impotence pills. Conversely, there is relatively little money being spent on research to cure viral infections or to produce vaccines for various deadly infectious diseases. The reason is simple: these drugs are taken once or twice, the disease is cured, and the patient walks away without being required to continue dropping money on the pharma company.
Why does the wealthiest nation in the entire world have one of the least effectual healthcare systems in the developed world? Because it can afford it!
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 introduced. There were 22 cases of polio reported in 2017, in the WORLD.
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.
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?
Drillem, Billum, Killem and Chillum. Seriously, there is a whole class of human endeavor that is not made better by the profit motive. Healthcare certainly belongs in it. It is something that should be pursued by practitioners and institutions to improve the public good not to get filthy rich. Charging large sums of money to prolong life is essentially extortion. Most developed societies recognize this by having long ago instituted single-payer systems. It is expensive, but demonstrably such a system vastly improves the society's productivity and quality of life from the bottom up -- a measurable plus economically. And, besides, it is just the decent way to run things.
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
> 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.
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 outcome of the studies they do, that's how it's going to be.
You can deny it, stick your head in the sand and carry on thinking you live in a system in which you matter.... and you have a voice / vote. I'm laughing at your post now, and I know I will be laughing in 10 years when you write the same one again on similar topic.
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.
Have gnu, will travel.
Why do you think the pharmacy industry gives you all the sob stories wanting more money for "research into a cure" because they know if they CURE something, they are OUT of business.
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.
Oh come on, he lives in Nordanswedfin, like you didn't know that ....; )
Start public killings of investment bankers. Watch how fast the rest of them start to behave.
You are welcome on my lawn.
This seems obvious and it's probably in the comments, but how do we incentivize companies to research and release these cures to the public? Shouldn't these companies be massively rewarded if they permanently fix one of society's problems? We should obviously tax treatments much more than cures, the latter should probably be fully subsidized too, no? Shouldn't this be pushed to the extreme, if a company is found to be suppressing technology that could save lives yet they're focusing on therapies that simply treat the disease, doesn't that warrant some sort of punishment? This is the one of the best examples of how capitalism can be detrimental to society and should be an area that is fully explored. People are dying because there is more money to be made off of treating a disease than curing it and the amount of death and suffering caused by this is simply inexcusable.
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Is it a good idea, to sell a product, that every human being on the planet, from now into the foreseeable future, will likely be intersted in buying? (That's assuming we ignore the moral reasons.)
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
Much medical research is already publicly financed in the United States. Just do more of it and repeal the Bob Dole law allowing universities to get together with pharma to profit from public research.
Your answer may vary depending on age, health, and other factors. Think carefully, your life may depend on that answer.
.
The fact is that pharmaceuticals are a tough business; you have to keep moving and developing new products; you can't just sit on your hands and milk the profits, or someone else will eat your lunch.
Actually i have not heard great things about the NHS, anecdotally speaking. And also may I ask what percent of drugs in EU hospitals comes from US companies ? Where I live everyone in the middle class gets a subscription to a private health clinic/network for the average stuff. The privates aren't yet big enough for cancer and stuff like big burns but they will be for sure in a few years. The subscriptions are not back breaking either if you work.
We need to make sure society provides sufficient compensation for developing permanent cures.
Or rather... part of it may be that we may allow temporary treatments to be rewarded too much ---- I would suggest the government Alter the Patent System for drugs such that each patient pays a One Time Royalty for the use of drugs which treat symptoms but are not Permanent cures... Profits derived from a drug's failure to cure --- or due to ongoing dependence on the drug NOT allowed to be guaranteed to the original maker/inventor of the drug. They can charge a premium, but competitors will ALWAYS be allowed to make generics --- Instead of providing a number of years during which only the primary drug can exist
After a patient pays the One Time Bounty: the patent holders' rights are exhausted, and ANY company with the manufacturing capability is allowed to produce and sell the drug to them without paying any license fees - the government approval process for such generics should be streamlined as much as possible ----- Only condition on generics is that drugs can only be administered to a patient on whose behalf a One Time Bounty has been received (For the X years during which the invention is protected to compensate the inventor/creator), OR whose One-Time-Bounty was waived in writing by the patent holder.
By inviting the generics competition ---- the price of all drugs will approach the marginal cost of production, just like the cost of non-patentable foods, etc. The BOUNTY Term then provides comparable compensation to companies that innovate new drugs; regardless of whether or not the drug is a permanent cure.
Intentionally allowing people to remain ill? THE SPECIAL HELL for you!
EVIL. Plain and simple, this is EVIL INCARNATE.
The purpose of medicine is to cure people, not make profit! Ethically speaking passing up the opportunity to cure a disease because it's 'less profitable' is WRONG in the extreme.
I've thought for quite some time now that certain industries should, by law, be not-for-profit, and healthcare and the pharmaceutical industries should be on that list -- or at least a legal limit of some sort to limit profits and discourage profiteering, or ethically wrong decisions like not curing something you could develop a cure for, to keep 'stringing people along' with 'management' of a disease or condition, just because it makes you more money.
Shit.. the very mention of something like this severely pisses me off.
Some industries should be not-for-profit, to discourage profiteering, unethical business practices, and outright criminal activity.
IN MY OPINION, the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries should be at the top of that list.
"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.
If the issue is long term recurring revenue, simply extend gene therapy patents to something like 35 years. By developing the cure, you become the exclusive seller to fix an entire generation of genetic disorders.
Lloyd Blankfein, the CEO of Goldman Sucks, has lymphoma, which is currently in remission. I hope that it comes back, and that a potential cure was suppressed due to Goldman not investing in the technology.
Let the piece of filth get a taste of his own medicine!
I was in my twenties, I think, before I realized there were for-profit hospitals.
Capitalism, to be blunt, has no business model for health care. You want to argue? So, you've never had US medical insurance, and had something denied, even though your doctor said you needed it? Ever had your insurance co-pays and payroll deductions go up, EVERY SINGLE YEAR, because the CEO and "investors" demand increases in ROI?
No? Then you're either 20 years old, or you're a liar.
We need a national healthcare system, like EVERY OTHER industrialized nation. And while we're at it, we need to nationalize big pharma. "Oh, but all their research?" Bull. 60% 80%? of ALL US MEDICAL RESEARCH, in hospitals and colleges, is funded by... grants from the US NIH, yeah, our tax dollars.
Prior to Nixon's gift to a major donor, healthcare was non-profit, from what I've read. After that, once healthcare was allowed to make a profit, the emphasis has been on "treatments", not "cures". Why fix something and get paid once when you can cash in on suffering forever by "treating" it?
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.
Curing patients is very bad for Capitalism. It is much more efficient to just keep manufacturing drugs and "controlling" an ilness instead of curing it. Phuckers.
Itâ(TM)s as sustainable as anything else that lots of people need just one of. There are countless examples: a home, a piece of sturdy furniture, a tool, etc. These are all sustainable for as long as we keep making new people.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
So if the analysis is done properly:
And obviously there's more money to be made from the latter. GS is committing the same incorrect comparison to a zero base state I've mentioned before. Where the person leaves out indirect consequences of their actions from the comparison (in this case, the person dying from a different disease some time in the future).
what we're asking is, in a society where all or most decisions are made by investors what is the optimal decision?
Good ROI is _never_ enough. Great ROI is never enough. It has to be extraordinary. That's why you've got so many venture capitalists buying up life saving medicines and raising the price 4000%. That's why my dad just paid $800 for his insulin... on Medicare (thanks Bush Jr and Medicare part D, and thanks for the right wing Clinton style Dems who voted for it, I'm looking at you Corey Booker. ).
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in one of the animated superman movies, Lex Luther was told by his scientists they found the cure for cancer. Lex said to see if they can spread the cure into a lifetime of treatments (or something similar). as greedy as the pharmaceutical companies are, who is to say it is not being done now with some diseases.
Couldn't they sell cures on the subscription model. You keep paying 30 dollar a month for as long as you live. For every cure you use your monthly subscription goes up. if you ever stop paying you will be barred forever from signing up again till you pay all your back dues. So if you get the cure and then stop paying next time you get sick and need a cure you need to pay all your backdues. 40 years of subscription is surely more than what they could charge for a one time cure.
**Life is too short to be serious**
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 with many gods. For a typical Hindu there is no contradiction in someone believing in a different god - for all they care it's just one more God in the Hindu Pantheon whether the god is called Jehovah, Jesus Dad or Allah.
**Life is too short to be serious**
The cure can be sold with a lifetime Warranty where if they get infected again the company will cure them and in return for the warranty they pay a monthly warranty fee. This also acts as quality control so the companies are motivated to find permanent cure so that they dont have to actually honor the warranty.
**Life is too short to be serious**
I know of a one shot cure that will have dramatic effects.
Take all those Goldman Sachs Analysts that would rather not have effective cures especially the ones that don't have reoccurring treatments, and line then up in a row.
Now go to the end of the row, and use a very powerful and high caliber gun, possibly an anti-tank weapon, and one shot should cure the entire issue of that kind of evil greed for at least an entire generation.
Weird: this story and the comments are simultaneously from 21 hours ago and from April â18. But itâ(TM)s February â19.
Primary care physicians - General Practitioners - are paid an annual fee for each patient they have on their books. They are free to refer them to specialists at hospitals or elsewhere. The taxpayer pays for all health care.
There are, of course, many problems. One is that people over consume health care to the point where it's rationed by waiting times. Which is probably better than by ability to pay except that you can still buy additional coverage.
The second is that some GPs have realised that because young adults make little demand on the service, providing a service focused on these consumers generates higher income for less work. Tweakable by the rules changing to reflect useage levels, but the point is significant.
The UK's NHS operates a mixed market. Primary care physicians are actually independent contracts, paid a fixed amount per patient on their books. Most hospital services are provided by government owned services, but not all, However the core point - that it's ultimately paid for by taxes - apart from a few people who choose to go privately or have private insurance - is correct.
Whilst that sounds impressive in theory, in reality somebody has to pay for the research that leads to new drugs. Unless the taxpayer is willing to fund this - and that will mean a significant tax hike - your morality will end up killing people. And even if the taxpayer does fund it, how does that relate to other countries' health care system. If Australia develops a drug, does it have to allow everyone to prescribe it? If so, how do you stop freeloading by countries unwilling to do research? NATO has this problem in defence...
what kind of psychopath do you have to be to think like that?
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
Instead of asking if one-shot cures are a good business model, they should be asking if there should be a shift to a business model that's better for people...
... our P&L needs curing more than you do.
Yes, because:
mutation
of course, no one said it had to be a large business.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
Goldman Sachs is uniquely positioned to ask that question, given its impeccable moral reputation.