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275 points swores | 1 comments | | HN request time: 1.249s | source
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FredPret ◴[] No.40173118[source]
Drugs may be overpriced.

There is probably some bloat in drug development. But then again, maybe not. I'm not an expert.

What I do know is that drugs have gotten dramatically better in the short amount of time I've been alive.

The other thing we all know is that the source of this article, The Guardian and their friends, have a shitlist of industries and institutions it loves to hate.

Ask yourself: will they ever write a positive article about a defense contractor, a bank, big pharma, a US billionaire, or a landlord, even if said entity walks on water and then saves a million babies and the penguins and the world?

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pfdietz ◴[] No.40173169[source]
People who don't like prices of new drugs are free to not use those drugs.

They want to have the benefits of the existence of drugs without paying the cost of discovering the drugs and bringing them to market. It's pernicious entitlement, made more outrageous by complaining about the greed of those actually providing the new drugs.

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dlisboa ◴[] No.40173448[source]
That's a rather reductionist view of it. Companies don't exist in a vacuum, they have a social contract. It seems in your view there's nothing we can complain about them as we can always just not buy the drugs, freeing them of any scrutiny.

But society create rules for companies to exist within, many of which are broken, but without which the never ending search for profits would do more harm than good. Society even provides these companies with their intellectual labor, training them in high schools and universities, which is not paid back by them in full (maybe partly if that) either in grants or in compensation for these workers.

Maybe this is an offshoot of the anarcho-capitalism mindset that is popular these days where companies can do absolutely no wrong and we should all be thankful they exist to judge whether we're worthy enough to not die of diabetes.

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1. ryandrake ◴[] No.40173802[source]
Not only do companies not exist in a vacuum, but they have no inherent right to exist in the first place. Companies are graciously allowed to exist because the state (a proxy for the people) approves them, the state grants their charter, the state provides them the corporate veil and limited liability they often abuse... Companies only exist because we the people decided that the public good they are supposed to serve outweighs their downsides. And we the people should also be able to decide that a particular company should not exist, if that company operates against the public good.