The financial cost of saving a life: should it matter?

NewApproach

Lots of nonsense in this thread.

You can put a value on a person's life. In fact it is necessary.

As for people who argue that the drug companies could easily produce the drugs for a nominal cost. This is true, for the second, third, fourth drug. The first drug costs the pharma companies hundreds of millions, even billions. Who do you suggest is going to pay that?

bjork

RecordStraight wrote: »

So your theory is that they are deliberately wasteful so as not to pay for everybody's treatment?

So your theory is if we stop treating people we'll have enough money to run the health service? :rolleyes:



Also the waste is from the top down. How many of these "honest " people spoke up about their over payments? Shows the type of people we have in "care services"

Amirani

The_Captain wrote: »

Jesus, we literally live in a country where the standard of healthcare you receive, and your chances of surviving, are directly correlated with income levels, to the point where we have special hospitals only for rich people.

Same as pretty much every country so.

renegademaster

conorh91 wrote: »

Can we put a price on life?

life only comes about once so no, we cannot put a price on life!!

Capt'n Midnight

NewApproach wrote: »

As for people who argue that the drug companies could easily produce the drugs for a nominal cost. This is true, for the second, third, fourth drug. The first drug costs the pharma companies hundreds of millions, even billions. Who do you suggest is going to pay that?

Governments , health services and health insurers.

the ones who already pay the drug companies the bulk of their income. Difference is by cutting out profit to shareholders and marketing costs you could saved $188Bn in 2013


As a first step I'd love the EU to say to the drug companies that we won't contribute to marketing costs. It's not like we need marketing droids to inform us of the results of mandatory clinical trials. Astra Zeneca spent 28% of it's income on marketing in 2013. That's $7.3Bn on Sales and Marketing compared to $4.3Bn on R&D. If your product is good enough you shouldn't have to advertise it especially when the customer is obliged to evaluate alternatives in an impartial evidence based manner.

If you have to spend billions developing a market for something the customer really really needs then it might be such a good product. Also when your industry gets repeatedly fined over claims and bribes it's questionable if your marketing is ethical.



There is an argument that big pharma should be rewarded for betting the company on the next big thing. Tell that to the Nuclear Power Industry or Airliner Manufacturers who do that every launch, and probably don't have anything else in the pipeline. Many examples of companies being broken by a bad launch. IBM spent $5Bn back in the 1960's developing computers.

The patent expire thing ? Talk to the whole computer industry where billion dollar investments turn sand into something worth more than gold. But technology lifecycle are just 45 month and at the end of it your investment is worth less than sand because it now costs money to dispose what is now toxic waste.

RecordStraight

bjork wrote: »

So your theory is if we stop treating people we'll have enough money to run the health service? :rolleyes:

No, my theory is you spend the limited money in a way that benefits the most people and try to keep waste to a minimum. Your notion that any waste at all means that the whole 'lack of resources' rationale is bunk is touchingly naive.

RecordStraight

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

The patent expire thing ? Talk to the whole computer industry where billion dollar investments turn sand into something worth more than gold. But technology lifecycle are just 45 month and at the end of it your investment is worth less than sand because it now costs money to dispose what is now toxic waste.

So what?

Is this observation meant to change the laws of economics? People will not invest if there is no chance of a return.

Kurtosis

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

If your product is good enough you shouldn't have to advertise it especially when the customer is obliged to evaluate alternatives in an impartial evidence based manner.

If you have to spend billions developing a market for something the customer really really needs then it might be such a good product.

Some countries permit direct to patient advertising of pharmaceuticals.

Also, there are often multiple brands of a drug available, or several treatment options within a drug class with virtually no difference in efficacy, hence why pharmaceutical companies need to market their product.

ressem

bjork wrote: »

So your theory is if we stop treating people we'll have enough money to run the health service? :rolleyes:



Also the waste is from the top down. How many of these "honest " people spoke up about their over payments? Shows the type of people we have in "care services"

At the national centre for pharmacoeconomics, they try to look at the data and see which of the new drugs being marketed provide a benefit.

They've to trawl through the claims of trial data and see what looks legit.
Plenty are rejected.
http://www.ncpe.ie/pharmacoeconomic-evaluations/all-drug/drugs/


In the case of the €437,247 (including 23% VAT) per year drug, they thought that there's evidence of reducing the need for transfusions, but less for reducing thrombosis, renal failure and mortality.

Nice of the owner to raise the worry that the condition might return even worse if the drug is stopped in the Forbes interview.

As for the thread question...
There's the claim that a thousand lives could be saved each year by stopping unregulated pharma testing of the poor in the undeveloped world, India, Uganda, Philippines.

BarryD

Objectively, clearly the financial cost of saving a life should matter. It's a matter of allocating the state's resources to where it can benefit the most people and I for one, strongly suspect that the optimum cost/ benefit analysis does not necessarily include purchasing hugely expensive drugs to treat rare conditions.

It may be 'sexy' to do this, it may be good PR and it may be hard to say no but I find it very hard to believe that it's in the best interests of our overall health service.

Capt'n Midnight

ressem wrote: »

As for the thread question...
There's the claim that a thousand lives could be saved each year by stopping unregulated pharma testing of the poor in the undeveloped world, India, Uganda, Philippines.

interesting

then again there's the other lives lost when they market a drug for a use for which it wasn't intended or certified

The Corinthian

bjork wrote: »

So your theory is if we stop treating people we'll have enough money to run the health service? :rolleyes:

Straw man.

Also the waste is from the top down. How many of these "honest " people spoke up about their over payments? Shows the type of people we have in "care services"

Well then, as I earlier suggested...

The Corinthian wrote: »

if you feel so strongly about it, you could go off and do a primary degree, masters and Phd in the field. Maybe do a few postdocs too. Pay for them all and forego a real salary during the 8+ years you're studying. Then to make these drugs more affordable, you can accept the same level of salary you'd have made if you'd just gotten a job as a butcher on leaving school.

Ray Palmer

penguin88 wrote: »

Some countries permit direct to patient advertising of pharmaceuticals.

Also, there are often multiple brands of a drug available, or several treatment options within a drug class with virtually no difference in efficacy, hence why pharmaceutical companies need to market their product.

There are very few countries that allow direct marketing and interestingly the country with the most expensive medical treatment in the world allow it. That is the USA.

As for the price of a human life I remember a philosophy talk on the cost of life an government funding. Essentially they have to make decisions people don't have to make and have to look with a different moral.

The example he used was there is a road in Paris that is tree lined and there are a number of fatal accidents each year as cars crash into the trees. If they cut the trees down it would save lives. The decided to keep the trees knowing this putting the value of the trees over people.
Now compare what they did in this country they spent a fortune to change the barrier on our motorway because of the risk to motorcyclists even though they were going to have to rip it up again when the road was being redone. Public outcry was the cause. I don't think that was a good use of funds but others will argue it saved lives

KomradeBishop

Rather than this being an issue of cost, it is more an issue of how the pharma industry operates - privately researched/developed drugs tend to be put under prohibitively costly patents, and since the industry is run for-profit, this creates incentives to try and engage in regulatory capture to make patents last as long as possible, to expand the range of what is patentable, and to slow the rate of development/advancement of drugs, so that new discoveries/advancements can have their introduction to production delayed, so they can be patented just as prior patents run out.

Perverse incentives like this (and many others), lead to an industry which is incredibly efficient at making profits (through patent-based rent-seeking activities), and very inefficient at maximizing the rate of technological advancement and benefit to public health.

There really needs to be big reforms here, and much greater publicly funded research done; perhaps with some kind of stipulations/incentives, that private companies benefiting from the publicly funded research, must negotiate and strike a deal with public research bodies and governments, if they want to use public research (a deal, such that privately developed patents etc., are not excessively costly/prohibitive, and perhaps freely allowing governments access to private patent pools).

I don't know the best way to resolve the problem, but it will definitely involve much greater publicly-funded involvement in pharma research, to change the priority goal away from profit-maximization (and its perverse incentives) to maximization of technological advancement and public health benefits.

RecordStraight

KomradeBishop wrote: »

Rather than this being an issue of cost, it is more an issue of how the pharma industry operates - privately researched/developed drugs tend to be put under prohibitively costly patents, and since the industry is run for-profit, this creates incentives to try and engage in regulatory capture to make patents last as long as possible, to expand the range of what is patentable, and to slow the rate of development/advancement of drugs, so that new discoveries/advancements can have their introduction to production delayed, so they can be patented just as prior patents run out.

Your knowledge truly knows no bounds. How exactly can regulators change patent law? :rolleyes:

conorh91

renegademaster wrote: »

life only comes about once so no, we cannot put a price on life!!

And when resources are allocated away from say, Emergency services' resources, or frontline staff, to pay €400,000 to a pharmaceutical company for one man's drugs, you don't think any other patient loses out?

'Putting a price on life' isn't really the object. It's about admitting that we have to look at the big picture, and concentrate resources where they will be most effective in preserving and enhancing public health for as many people as possible. It just isn't possible to write a blank cheque guaranteeing unlimited resources to everyone.

Again, I'm not necessarily saying the man from the OP doesn't deserve the drugs in question. That's a question for health economists. But we must recognize that there are circumstances where we have to say 'sorry, but no'.

goose2005

steddyeddy wrote: »

You get into dangerous territory when you start talking about who deserves health care more.

Yes, you're into the dangerous territory of not having infinity euros in the health budget.