The chickens for getting sick.
Sorry. This isn’t funny. I do understand that aspect of Pharma, although, I’d never had it presented in that way. But, these happenings were unintentional. They weren’t decided upon for the sole purpose of making meds too expensive for people to make money. Remember, I originally said INTENTION. I may have put everyone in the same category where I shouldn’t have, but can you honestly say that ALL Pharma companies’ prices are governed by the same types of incidents?
I’m not saying it’s funny.
You are WAY oversimplifying the issue.
Yes, there is criminal mishandling when it comes to finds in the pharmaceutical business. But more times than not it’s happenstance. You have isolated cases of true, disgusting crime as with the epi-pens…but that is really rare.
You are trying to insert intention where
most of the time there is none. The unfortunate part of living in a country where scientists research new drugs is that we often face high drug costs. However, we also benefit from those drugs to a degree which people who eventualy benefit from the generic versions do not.
There’s a Catholic mom blogger who’s two boys have a rare wasting disease. They are losing ability and muscle by the day. Scientists have now developed a drug and they have been approved to receive it with insurance and private grants paying for it. Each dose is hundreds of thousands of dollars. There are some families that are not as lucky. Their insurance won’t pay, they can’t pay and private charities can’t foot the cost.
But this drug currently is made in small batches and
does take tens of thousands to produce. It basically has to be tended and babysat for the entire process as well as it having pricy and rare components.
You could say that the drug companies are “intentionally” pricing people out. They don’t have to make a profit–they could break even and help one more child.
But that takes the incentive out of research. Those investors benefiting from their profit now want to reinvest. They want to pour more money into finding cures for rare diseases.
However, it’s very unlikely this drug will ever be available to children in non-developed countries. It’s just too expensive to produce.
You’re looking for a bad guy.
A line in the sand.
You’re looking to be told “YES! this person/company/industry is EVIL!” That God will punish their greed. But you’re assuming greed where there often is none…just market forces. You equate luxury with causing poverty–when that just isn’t the case.
There is no easy answer. There is no company that hasn’t done
something greedy and there is no company that hasn’t done its darndest to keep prices low and reasonable. Modern medicine is a complicated beast. We have gone places and done things with science that were once a fantasy.
