[dougmwne]

I am sure there is some evidence on both sides, but at the end of the day, people get into medicine and medical research to heal people, not keep them sick. The USA does not have the only medical system in the world and many countries run their systems with the goal of controlling costs, not increasing them. I don't think this kind of pessimistic conspiracy thinking adds to the conversation.

[incrudible]

If there's more money to be made from keeping people sick than outright curing them, that logically is a disincentive from curing them.

It's not conspiracy thinking to look at the incentive structures within systems to predict possible negative outcomes.

Of course, there's a moral incentive to not keep people sick, but history shows that we can not rely on people acting morally. The pessimism is justified.

If we expect companies to provide cures over treatments, we at least must allow them to profit as much or more from a cure as they would from a treatment.

[jjcon]

> we at least must allow them to profit as much or more from a cure as they would from a treatment

I think that’s where you go wrong. There are huge profit incentives for a cure. If a biotech company comes up with a cure they will instantly have the business of every afflicted person on the planet. The market for that and price they can charge will be way larger than a slightly different treatment.

Beyond that, there are labs all over the world funded by public dollars to research avenues to a cure, it’s just way more complicated than effective treatment.

[call_me_dana]

There are indeed huge profit incentives for a cure. There are even larger profits to be had from a monthly treatment that the patient has to take for the rest of their lives.

Are you saying people that aren’t taking a monthly biologic injection for example will start coming out of the woodwork for a cure when normally they wouldn’t seek treatment for their malady?

[tsimionescu]

People don't buy medical treatments in most of the world. Countries do.

And countries will always pick the best priced possible treatment.

[jjcon]

You speak as if there is just one entity making these things. There isn’t, there are hundreds of labs all over the world working on this. If one of them comes out with a treatment alternative like this it may gain some traction but if they came out with a cure they would dominate the global market

[JumpCrisscross]

> It's not conspiracy thinking to look at the incentive structures within systems to predict possible negative outcomes

It is when one mischaracterizes the system.

Medical research is not an oligopoly. It is oligopolistic within some domains, but as we've seen with the Covid vaccine, there are at least four nation-state domains (e.g. Russia, China, India and "the West") operating competitively, and within those domains, there are varying degrees of competitiveness (e.g. Pfizer vs. Moderna vs. AstraZeneca).

If you have a cure to something everyone else can only treat, you'll make a money selling the cure and taking your competitors' market share. Because if you don't, they will. It's a classic cartel / prisoner's dilemma problem with the added explosive of a multi-decade patent-protected monopoly for the first mover.