Pharma is being told by investment firms: we
don't want cures. Healthy people don't make them any money.
I mean, they've been accused of it before, but now it's widely on record what they are acting upon. I still see serious problems letting such delusional people run important things. I first read this in 2018 and I'm assuming things got worse, as they do on this subject:
It's Official! Curing Patients Is Bad for Business
Quote:
Pharmaceutical companies are developing new drugs in only two therapeutic areas these days -- cancer and rare diseases. Why? These are the only therapeutic areas where exorbitant pricing is tolerated by payers.
How exorbitant are we talking about? Most new drugs for cancer and rare diseases are being priced above $400,000 a year per patient. Some drugs are being priced at $1 million per treatment. And prices continue to soar.
Who loses from this pricing practice? You might think the patients with cancer or with rare diseases are most likely to suffer. But that isn't true.
To cover these exorbitant costs for even a small number of people, payers slash their expenditures in other therapeutic areas, and these cuts affect millions of people. For example, instead of agreeing to pay for the best treatment for diabetes for $1,500, payers approve the use of a second-rate treatment for $75. Physicians are not good at challenging payers, so most patients will get the second-rate treatment.
So the patients who lose the most are typically those who do not have cancer or rare diseases. Actually, nearly everyone else loses when a company prices a novel drug at extreme levels.
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An even better plan is
avoiding a lot of unnecessary medical treatment, of course. But I can tell you -- as someone forced into early retirement from health issues -- once a person is a US senior we are officially a cash cow in a for-profit system. It's great that a sick person can see all kinds of specialists but why do retirees get it forced on them as a hobby?
Practically a job in itself between fighting the extra insurer US people get sucked into signing up for, and all the different offices and appointments and tests, with extra confusion and all the burden on the patient to track everything and get there and come up with co-pays.
It's not that I haven't helped close seniors through this, but doing this myself, after 20 years of eating for health, is that even being healthy is not always enough to get off the ride. My doctor understands my cholesterol numbers and my diet, but 99 others would insist on statins, maybe even throw me out.
BTW, the way to solve this problem is to fire your doctor. But we no longer have the privilege, most of the time. Especially once we are retired.
Poor health practices by the patient leads to poor health advice from the doctors who have to --
first -- cross off the most effective strategies because diabetes and heart disease patients
won't change their lifestyle. They want to take a pill. Because they have absorbed that this is what you do: take a pill and go about your business.
It's not that we're doing a bad thing by providing health care to people who need it. It's that we're doing a good thing in a bad way, because the incredible bulk of this senior care is
preventable.
Snag is, the way it is set up for profit: if we aren't sick, how can they make money? While the US once had the reputation for "best healthcare," now it's merely the most expensive.
Wrong metric. And do remember that, even if Oprah has a ton of money, it hasn't helped her lose weight. But she knows her audience. Really well.