| I find the arguments selective and entirely unconvincing.
The examples he brings up are all selected to elicit an emotional response while not really investigating how regulations have prevented significant number of deaths (this is admittedly difficult). Several of the arguments and sources given make only sense at first glance, e.g. the argument about the FDA would be more convincing if not for the fact that pharmaceuticals still spend as much on marketing (that's the conservative estimate) as on R&D (they even argue that giving away free samples should not count as marketing I kid you not https://www.raps.org/news-and-articles/news-articles/2019/7/...). The arguments that anesthesists give a good example for a liability model because of some improvements made in the 90s, maybe makes sense from a purely US point of view. The question is (and this was not investigated in the source) how did the improvements compare in countries without the same liability but regulations. So would (or have) the same improvements being made with regulation. Similay he brings up nuclear power and argues that liability would be a better model. Apart from the fact that the cost of nuclear vs renewables is not primarily driven by regulation (there was an analysis here on HN a couple of months ago, which I can't find on mobile atm), liability would kill nuclear in its tracks because no insurance would or could cover the potential cost a nuclear disaster. Finally, why not talk about the FCC, a regulation agency which has made flying the safest mode of travel in the world. In fact if the aviation industry was as lax as the medical we had planes falling out of the sky multiple times a day. They only recently come under flag, because they have been dropping the ball because they got too cosy with the industry. Largely in the desire to speed up the process, which also refutes the argument that there is not counter regulation pressure. Another example of pressure to reduce regulations are financial regulations. Their reduction arguably gave us (or contributed) to the GFC. |
This is the classic pro-centralization bias.
Cancer and heart treatment are still in the stone age, with whole-body toxification in chemotherapy, and cutting open people's chest for open heart surgery, still being mainstay treatments.
Costs are also not declining, making cutting edge treatments unaffordable and inaccessible.
Compare to less regulated sectors, where quality has improved orders of magnitude while costs have massively declined, and it's clear that medicine/pharmaceuticals are underpeforming.