[wpietri]

Oh, you think people should get together and pay for drug development and medical treatment of people with rare diseases? Good idea. In fact, maybe we should create some sort of system where funds are collected widely and then distributed through systems that judge merit, utility, and cost effectiveness.

Oh, wait! We already did! This literally exists in most countries. In the US the government funds about half of all basic research. In many biomedical fields, that number rises to 80-90%. Treatment too is covered by "crowdfunding" through government-supported health care systems.

The guy's grumble here is that he doesn't like the system. And there are plenty of fair arguments to make there. But his complaint isn't, "We need to do better funding cures over treatments," or "The government should support rare diseases better." It's a confusion of of free-market slogans inside a context that not only has little to do with a free market, but one where he only has something to sell due to extensive government funding and a government-granted monopoly.

Free-market approaches work well when figuring out the price of beans that you buy every week at the market. They are of very narrow utility in exotic, life-critical treatments for rare diseases. I'm still all for applying them where we can. But this guy's gripe sounds more like free-market fundamentalism (or straight greed) than any thoughtful understanding of how to fund public goods.