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

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Here...

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They found that kids who lacked health insurance were 60 percent more likely to die in the hospital than were kids who had insurance. After adjusting for such differences as race and gender, uninsured kids were still 37.8 percent more likely to die than kids with insurance coverage.

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Causation and correlation. From that same article:

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And though the study does not prove that being uninsured boosts a child's mortality risk, it does suggest a strong association between insurance status and odds of dying.

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They didn't die because they lacked health insurance. They died because their parents/guardians didn't pursue treatment (free treatment in all likelihood) when a problem arose.

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They didn't die because they lacked health insurance. They died because their parents/guardians didn't pursue treatment (free treatment in all likelihood) when a problem arose.

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Becuase they could not afford the treatment. Because they did not have insurance to help shoulder the cost.

If I don't have car insurance, I'm not more likely to cause an accident. But if I do get into an accident, dealing with it is going to be a lot harder if I don't have car insurance.

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Her son, Alec, was a Type 1 diabetic – someone who needs to take insulin every day to survive. But turning 26 meant his parents' insurance would no longer cover the cost, shooting his monthly cost for insulin and supplies up to $1,300 per month, according to his mom.

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That doesn't make sense. I'm sure that's what it felt like to his mother, but that number seems awfully high, and there are plenty of ways to lower it.

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Becuase they could not afford the treatment. Because they did not have insurance to help shoulder the cost.

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That's not how it works in the real world for multiple reasons, Medicaid being one of them. Healthcare is more complicated than necessary, I'm not arguing otherwise, but there are plenty of resources available for people who "can't afford" it.

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That's not how it works in the real world for multiple reasons, Medicaid being one of them. Healthcare is more complicated than necessary, I'm not arguing otherwise, but there are plenty of resources available for people who "can't afford" it.

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There are holes in the safety net. Even after Obamacare/Medicaid expansion.

That complexity just makes the holes larger.

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The insurance company and providers negotiate many of those rates. If the wheel chair provider is selling the SAME chair for $330 on Amazon, blaming them makes no sense.

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If the retailer has to deal with an insurance claim, there is a cost associated with that (processing/admin costs). But that's not 10X the cost of the equipment itself.

I think the retailer realized that he could bilk more money out of the insurance company - significantly more -than if he sells it direct.

And the insurance company just raises rates or shifts cost-sharing to cover it.

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I am usually in the drug company’s corner but if they are pricing this because they can hold people “hostage” with the life of their child instead of some sort of cost/amortization basis

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What do you mean by this? Amortization has nothing to do with pricing.

People don't understand that a capitalistic society is exactly why the U.S. and other countries were able to innovate medicine as fast as they have.

As a biotech company owner, would you take huge amounts of risk, spend billions, and devote years to researching treatments for a capped margin of X percentage? No... you'd play it safe and stick with selling current drugs.

People need to understand the world isn't perfect, but if you like innovation then you need to accept that companies will charge a shitload for groundbreaking discoveries.

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It's not exactly amortization, but he's pointing out the company is going to recoup their investment plus their margins.

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Figured so.

Let's just make a regulation capping margins at 70% and see how fast companies stop innovating

Not to mention the accounting behind all this

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Seems cruel but these people don't work for free either

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you're right they get government grants

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

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Abso-fricking-loutly.

And I understand the work that goes into it, but there should be no reason that we as a culture shouldn't give a baby anything that can help or save their life.