[thinkloop]

Everyone is blaming the company or the patent system or general greed, but really there is an extremely simple solution: pay the $1M. In Canada and Europe it's medicare, ie taxes, ie the general population that would pay for it, but they refused. In the US it's insurance companies, ie the general population (as insurance is just socialized losses), that refused. If people are uninsured then force the state, ie everyone who is feeling so bad about it, to pay for it. It's odd that being the genius inventors also means that you now also have to be the only ones to pay for it. This isn't a story of exorbitant profits - even at a million a dose they would barely make their money back. It makes no sense to isolate the group of people who are actually working on the thing to be the only ones to pay for it.

By extension, this story demonstrates how we price life. What if the cure was a billion dollars, is that worth society paying? What about a trillion? At one point a limit is reached, and it seems that one million is one of those limits that we all quietly agree upon.