> ... the past two years have been a fun experiment in semi-free-market medicine. I don’t mean the patent violations - it’s no surprise that you can sell drugs cheap if you violate the patent - I mean everything else. For the past three years, ~2 million people have taken complex peptides provided direct-to-consumer by a less-regulated supply chain, with barely a fig leaf of medical oversight, and it went great. There were no more side effects than any other medication. People who wanted to lose weight lost weight. And patients had a more convenient time than if they’d had to wait for the official supply chain to meet demand, get a real doctor, spend thousands of dollars on doctors’ visits, apply for insurance coverage, and go to a pharmacy every few weeks to pick up their next prescription.
This comment feels disingenuous. Peptides were first synthesized in the 80s and we have been providing peptide drugs to diabetes patients since the 2000s. So this “experiment in semi-free-market medicine” in which “there have been no more side effects than any other medication” is built on the back of 20yrs of research + 20yrs of commercial use.
To me it seems like quoted comment is trying to make a case for the deregulation in healthcare. Which is 1) a slippery slope and 2) not supported by the example they provided. It’s just a whole lot of libertarian vaporware
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43369502