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275 points swores | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.261s | 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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notaustinpowers ◴[] No.40173599[source]
I hope you never become a diabetic when you get older!

An old coworker of mine dropped dead on her lunch break because her insulin was unusable when it got too warm during shipment. Her insurance said they would not pay for another month's doses until the next month and she'd have to pay $2,000 out of pocket. Which isn't the kind of money a poor girl from the middle of nowhere South Carolina has.

And now she's dead...because she was $800 short of raising that money from a GoFundMe...

But I sure am happy that her insurance company beat their quarterly earnings estimates!

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FredPret ◴[] No.40174120[source]
That's fucked-up and I'm sorry that happened.

Clearly things could be much better.

But that doesn't mean the system as a whole isn't a huge net positive.

The right approach is tweaking, not destroying.

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notaustinpowers ◴[] No.40174241[source]
IDK about your philosophy, but any death that is 100% unavoidable invalidates the entire system of business that has been built.

Nothing in this world is above a life. Not money, not profit, not a quarterly bonus. Zilch, nada, zero.

I'm biased, obviously, but by principle, I refuse to accept a system that accepts avoidable deaths as a "necessary" consequence of their business model.

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1. Dylan16807 ◴[] No.40176733[source]
> I refuse to accept a system that accepts avoidable deaths as a "necessary" consequence of their business model.

Your first line doesn't just exclude systems that "accept" such things, it sounds like it excludes every system that isn't perfect.

In other words, it excludes all big systems. Your world would collapse immediately.

Though whether the line I quoted means the same thing depends on what you mean by "accepts". Is always striving for better enough? Or do you demand unrealistic expectations? Mistakes are inevitable; is "inevitable" different from "necessary"?