re: Treatment for infant muscle wasting disease to hit market. potential price: $2 million

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So their reasoning for the price is justified? No one is making them give it out for free (but that is a entirely different subject), but the only reason why the price is so high is based off the potential of that baby and not the actual cost to make the medicine. Also is this where we want medicine to go (it is already down this path for sure), where people produce medicine with their primary goal of not helping/curing people but to maximize their profits. True medicine shouldn't be able making profits but about helping/saving lives.

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This train of thought leads to no new products and more people dying than just the very VERY select population.

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Even at $2M, most of us would probably be willing to pay for their own children.

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Speak for yourself

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Force doctors to pay for and go to school a long time then work for free: Democrats are happy

Give people a free cruise and clothes, food, and shelter, then politely ask for their help picking some vegetables: the Democrats lose their minds

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Wait, is this a real post from Gaucho?

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This train of thought leads to no new products and more people dying than just the very VERY select population.

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I agree with you to an extent, but there are tons of people that would love to put their name next to "cure for cancer" and could care less about how much money it makes them.

There's nothing wrong with people making money, or making a lot of money. No one is saying just b/c you cured a terminal disease that you have to give it away for free.

It just seems unethical to put a market value on saving lives. You invent something tangible, like a way to actually use all that damn gypsum that piles up by the plants around here, then make your money based on what the market can dictate.
Just seems like you'd have an ethical obligation to find a way to save peoples lives when you can, not see what the market value is of that cure knowing some people are going to die b/c of the price tag you put on this cure.

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It just seems unethical to put a market value on saving lives. You invent something tangible, like a way to actually use all that damn gypsum that piles up by the plants around here, then make your money based on what the market can dictate.
Just seems like you'd have an ethical obligation to find a way to save peoples lives when you can, not see what the market value is of that cure knowing some people are going to die b/c of the price tag you put on this cure.

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I dont want to come across like I don't understand your position because I do and I 100% understand why you feel the way you do.

Companies invest millions if not billions into R&D for this select population drug.

If you have a population size of 50 million people with this disease and an OPEX/CAPEX expenditure in the billions, you have a fiduciary responsibility to your stakeholders to recoup their investment before anything or anyone else.

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The market will take care of that then

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Lke insulin?

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I get that without a doubt. But what if they didn't find a cure?
Like i said they all have a budget they work off of and it's something that doesn't take into the affect the hope of find a cure. Of course that's the goal, but from a financial standpoint, they aren't saying, we'll budget $100M for this research for the next 5 years and hope we find a cure to pay for that. The money they are using for this research is already funded.
Yes they need to get results off the research, and increase their revenue so they can do more research, but the research they do today, is based on a revenue stream they already have, not one they will have if a cure is found. The money they will make off this cure will help fund research for future research.

These are huge corporations, they aren't investing money they don't have into research.
How much money has gone into cancer research? if we have to pay all those people back when a cure is found, then the price tag for the cure is going to be hundreds of millions of dollars a pop.

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Well from the article I linked they purchased the company that started the drug for 8.7bn.

So we can probably start there

Cancer research has private and charitable donations in the millions every year.

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Even at $2M, most of us would probably be willing to pay for their own children.

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Willing, yes.

Able? I don't know.

If it was really 2 million, even if you could borrow the money interest free, the repayment is going to be $50,000 a year for 40 years. There aren't too many people that could afford that.

Also, it's not a pill, it's a treatment. Does that cost include all the costs of administering the treatment, facility costs, follow-up, etc?

Obviously they have to recoup their costs and make a profit. I'd like to see how they arrived at their 2 million price tag, what were their total costs, what is their profit margin, etc?

Also, is this one of those situations where the insurance company is going to take a 95 percent discount, so the actual cost to the insurer is $100K, which will be split between the insurer and the patient via deductibles and co-pays?

If the no-shite cost really is 2 million, I don't see insurance companies covering this. Why?

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but executives say the drug’s potential to cure spinal muscular atrophy, an inherited disease that typically kills babies before they turn two,

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Unless these babies are costing insurers well in excess of 2 million between birth and death before age two, it just doesn't make financial sense for the insurer to pay it.

Reality is, our current risk / payment systems don't really mesh with these situations. If we really want to help these babies, it's going to take some sort of new financing ideas, that probably involve the parent, the insurer, and the government serving as some sort of backstop.

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So they’ll sell drugs so babies can get swole but it’s still illegal for a doctor to give medicine to help a man build muscle?

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