the profit motive in medicine

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Skip
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Re: the profit motive in medicine

Post by Skip »

Skepdick wrote: Sat Feb 20, 2021 10:19 pm
So why did the wealth in France, Italy, Japan and Israel allow it and the wealth in the USA didn't?
Top-down policy-making. The government answers to the voters, not the lobbies.
Skepdick
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Re: the profit motive in medicine

Post by Skepdick »

Skip wrote: Sat Feb 20, 2021 11:05 pm
Skepdick wrote: Sat Feb 20, 2021 10:19 pm
So why did the wealth in France, Italy, Japan and Israel allow it and the wealth in the USA didn't?
Top-down policy-making. The government answers to the voters, not the lobbies.
So why does the governments in France, Italy, Japan and Israel answer to the voters, but the government in the USA doesn't?

Who do you think needs to write the policy which will make the government answer to the voters and what would the contents of such a policy be?
commonsense
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Re: the profit motive in medicine

Post by commonsense »

Since policy makers are already in the hands of the lobbyists, anti-lobbying policy is not on the horizon.
Skip
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Re: the profit motive in medicine

Post by Skip »

Skepdick wrote: Sat Feb 20, 2021 11:10 pm
So why does the governments in France, Italy, Japan and Israel answer to the voters, but the government in the USA doesn't?
$$$$$$ and Fear
Who do you think needs to write the policy which will make the government answer to the voters and what would the contents of such a policy be?
A vertebrate. Preferably 400+ vertebrates.
Walker
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Re: the profit motive in medicine

Post by Walker »

Federal Government Caught Buying ‘Fresh’ Flesh Of Aborted Babies Who Could Have Survived As Preemies
https://thefederalist.com/2021/04/15/fe ... -preemies/

"Last week, legal accountability group Judicial Watch dropped a bombshell: a nearly 600-page report proving the U.S. government has been buying and trafficking “fresh” aborted baby body parts. These body parts, purchased by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to “humanize” mice and test biologic drugs in scientific experiments, came from babies up to 24-weeks-old gestation, just weeks from being born."
commonsense
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Re: the profit motive in medicine

Post by commonsense »

Skepdick wrote: Fri Feb 19, 2021 11:36 pm
commonsense wrote: Fri Feb 19, 2021 11:29 pm There are preventive measures for all of the conditions mentioned, and while they may have some effect on the incidence of diseases, the measures are not effective enough to move any off the top 10 list.
How do you know the measures are "preventive" if they aren't lowering incidence?
Quite right. I should have said “so called preventive measures”.
Skepdick
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Re: the profit motive in medicine

Post by Skepdick »

commonsense wrote: Thu Apr 15, 2021 5:04 pm
Skepdick wrote: Fri Feb 19, 2021 11:36 pm
commonsense wrote: Fri Feb 19, 2021 11:29 pm There are preventive measures for all of the conditions mentioned, and while they may have some effect on the incidence of diseases, the measures are not effective enough to move any off the top 10 list.
How do you know the measures are "preventive" if they aren't lowering incidence?
Quite right. I should have said “so called preventive measures”.
And my point was simply that we call them "preventive measures" because they lower incidence.

The conclusion follows from the observation.
commonsense
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Re: the profit motive in medicine

Post by commonsense »

Skip wrote: Sat Feb 20, 2021 5:39 pm
commonsense wrote: Sat Feb 20, 2021 5:35 pm What do you suppose is responsible for the terrible ROI (Return on Investment)?
That depends. Which investments are yielding terrible returns? And what's "terrible" in this context?
I was talking about the overall investment in healthcare. By terribleness I meant that the spending is high but the ranking is not as high.
theory
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Re: the profit motive in medicine

Post by theory »

Advocate wrote: Fri Feb 19, 2021 4:07 am Making money off other people's misery is abhorrent. The only thing an ethical doctor can be doing is trying to lose their job by making themselves irrelevant. Focusing on either profit or status, esteem or credentials is a direct opportunity cost to your oath to save lives or whatever.

As a society we need to focus our energy almost exclusively on prevention and stop rewarding/perpetuating people who exhaustively create prettier and more expensive Band-Aids.
A very interesting topic. I have personally addressed this exact aspect using a critical blog.

Making money on disease creates an incentive to promote disease with chronic disease as the ideal situation.

Companies serve short term financial profit with a simple mindset: "if you don't do it, another company will. Either take a billion USD extra or lose the fight to survive."

The following research by professor John P. A. Ioannidis (Stanford University) shows that the short term financial interest of companies can result in profound corruption of science.

Effectiveness of antidepressants: an evidence myth constructed from a thousand randomized trials?
https://philpapers.org/rec/JOHEOA-2

The corruption for financial motives goes far. Some time ago it was revealed that the publisher of The Lancet (Elsevier) published 6 fake scientific journals for pharmaceutical companies, to mislead scientists and doctors in the financial interest of companies.
Reputational damage for medical publisher Elsevier, which publishes The Lancet, among others. Last week the Dutch-English company admitted that from 2000 to 2005 it had published six fake journals that were issued for scientific journals. In reality, they were marketing magazines paid for by pharmaceutical companies. The papers published in Australia had names such as Australasian Journal of General Practice and Australasian Journal of Bone & Joint Medicine. The magazines look solid, also because the name Elsevier is prominent on the front page and the sponsor's name is not.
Humans figuratively speaking started out of a cave and when weighing the potential for natural disaster against not making progress sufficiently fast could be in favor of the latter by definition. I can see from a political perspective that simply enabling Big Pharma companies to create research capacity sufficiently fast by any means would be in favor of humanity. In the case of a major species threatening event, the capacity of Big Pharma can be 100% dedicated to solving the problem.

At present times however, an argument could be that humans should evolve and put intelligence before practice.
simplicity
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Re: the profit motive in medicine

Post by simplicity »

The only rational path in health care is to go to a prevention-only model. Otherwise [and very soon] you will be able to spend an unlimited amount of money attempting to keep people alive.

Whatever capital society allocates to health services should be invested in preventative/education/support services thereby incentivising populations to take the best care of themselves and their families. If people choose to take the low road, they will pay the consequences.

We now have a system where people engage in all kinds of destructive behaviors [in part] because they believe the system will bail them out. No system should be in place to save people from a lifetime of poor behaviors. This only encourages others to go down this same short road to Hell.
commonsense
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Re: the profit motive in medicine

Post by commonsense »

simplicity wrote: Fri May 21, 2021 5:47 pm The only rational path in health care is to go to a prevention-only model. Otherwise [and very soon] you will be able to spend an unlimited amount of money attempting to keep people alive.

Whatever capital society allocates to health services should be invested in preventative/education/support services thereby incentivising populations to take the best care of themselves and their families. If people choose to take the low road, they will pay the consequences.

We now have a system where people engage in all kinds of destructive behaviors [in part] because they believe the system will bail them out. No system should be in place to save people from a lifetime of poor behaviors. This only encourages others to go down this same short road to Hell.
I agree with much of what you say, but I hasten to point to some shortcomings of a prevention-only approach.

Each year there are those who fall ill to influenza, some of whom have availed themselves of a flu shot. When prevention fails, treatment is needed to care for the sick.

Every year there are those who contract lung cancer, some of whom quit smoking or never smoked. Heart disease affects some who adhere to diet and exercise recommendations. Many incur trauma from traffic accidents, some of whom were wearing seatbelts and following all traffic laws.

Effective preventive measures will indeed reduce the cost of medical treatment while improving the health of many. However, without research and standard therapies, many would suffer needlessly.

I wholeheartedly endorse the importance of preventative medicine, however there are limits to prevention that can only be remedied by current medical and surgical techniques.
simplicity
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Re: the profit motive in medicine

Post by simplicity »

commonsense wrote: Sun Jun 13, 2021 9:39 pm
I agree with much of what you say, but I hasten to point to some shortcomings of a prevention-only approach.

Each year there are those who fall ill to influenza, some of whom have availed themselves of a flu shot. When prevention fails, treatment is needed to care for the sick.

Every year there are those who contract lung cancer, some of whom quit smoking or never smoked. Heart disease affects some who adhere to diet and exercise recommendations. Many incur trauma from traffic accidents, some of whom were wearing seatbelts and following all traffic laws.

Effective preventive measures will indeed reduce the cost of medical treatment while improving the health of many. However, without research and standard therapies, many would suffer needlessly.

I wholeheartedly endorse the importance of preventative medicine, however there are limits to prevention that can only be remedied by current medical and surgical techniques.
It's called spending other people's money and it works just great until there is no more money [and you have to go into massive debt and then counterfeit].

You either live within your means or pay the same price as those who chose to make this same mistake throughout history.
commonsense
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Re: the profit motive in medicine

Post by commonsense »

simplicity wrote: Mon Jun 14, 2021 9:47 pm
commonsense wrote: Sun Jun 13, 2021 9:39 pm
I agree with much of what you say, but I hasten to point to some shortcomings of a prevention-only approach.

Each year there are those who fall ill to influenza, some of whom have availed themselves of a flu shot. When prevention fails, treatment is needed to care for the sick.

Every year there are those who contract lung cancer, some of whom quit smoking or never smoked. Heart disease affects some who adhere to diet and exercise recommendations. Many incur trauma from traffic accidents, some of whom were wearing seatbelts and following all traffic laws.

Effective preventive measures will indeed reduce the cost of medical treatment while improving the health of many. However, without research and standard therapies, many would suffer needlessly.

I wholeheartedly endorse the importance of preventative medicine, however there are limits to prevention that can only be remedied by current medical and surgical techniques.
It's called spending other people's money and it works just great until there is no more money [and you have to go into massive debt and then counterfeit].

You either live within your means or pay the same price as those who chose to make this same mistake throughout history.
Please clarify for me how spending other people’s money until it runs out relates to the shortcomings of a prevention-only model. I don’t see the connection that you’re proposing.
simplicity
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Re: the profit motive in medicine

Post by simplicity »

commonsense wrote: Mon Jun 14, 2021 11:59 pm Please clarify for me how spending other people’s money until it runs out relates to the shortcomings of a prevention-only model. I don’t see the connection that you’re proposing.
I don't see any shortcomings in a prevention-only model.

Many people believe that just because a technology exists, everybody should have access to it. This is ignorance. Imagine how much car insurance would be if the same idea applied, that is, no matter how poorly you maintained your vehicle, insurance would have to fix and the cost would be spread out over the entire population.

People need to be made responsible for their own health. If through unfortunate circumstances they are born with [or acquire] complex health issues, then lower cost treatments can be made available depending on what a society determines is affordable. It is not sustainable to spend incredibly large amounts of money on health care [especially once this system crashes and real money is used once again].

Sad as it may seem, the party's over and all the adult children are going to have to grow-up and face the music.
Advocate
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Re: the profit motive in medicine

Post by Advocate »

[quote=simplicity post_id=514071 time=1623772610 user_id=21803]
[quote=commonsense post_id=513946 time=1623711578 user_id=14610]
Please clarify for me how spending other people’s money until it runs out relates to the shortcomings of a prevention-only model. I don’t see the connection that you’re proposing.
[/quote]
I don't see any shortcomings in a prevention-only model.

Many people believe that just because a technology exists, everybody should have access to it. This is ignorance. Imagine how much car insurance would be if the same idea applied, that is, no matter how poorly you maintained your vehicle, insurance would have to fix and the cost would be spread out over the entire population.

People need to be made responsible for their own health. If through unfortunate circumstances they are born with [or acquire] complex health issues, then lower cost treatments can be made available depending on what a society determines is affordable. It is not sustainable to spend incredibly large amounts of money on health care [especially once this system crashes and real money is used once again].

Sad as it may seem, the party's over and all the adult children are going to have to grow-up and face the music.
[/quote]

I've heard 1/3 of GoFundMe's are for health care costs. Socialized medicine is the only way to have a sustainable society, and if that's not enough, it's the right thing to do.
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