| > ...it's likely to be tough to control costs and yet maintain R&D and innovation I'm running a biotech/healthcare startup, and this point is rather interesting for me. Most of these arguments against "crazy high" drug pricing in the US work to vilify the large pharma and biotech companies. I don't seek to defend them, but perhaps we can look at some of these conundrums through a startup's lens: Getting my product to market is incredibly challenging. There's a good amount of novel technology development and research around it, and we're not even developing a therapeutic. We're working in a scientifically challenging space (cancer pathology), so things aren't easy. Even if we can build what we are trying to, that's not the sum total of our costs. We have to invest a huge amount of energy into validating that what we've built is scientifically accurate, and then medically appropriate. This isn't for regulatory approval, this is simply to convince our customers (and basic ethics/QA, I suppose). The standards to which our product will be held are quite high because we influence peoples' lives. That's the curse and the blessing of healthcare. Given all the work we're putting into this and the nontrivial cost of the project, we'll need to generate significant revenue to make it work out. It doesn't come cheaply, but in the US we think there's room in budgets for us. We don't seek to price exorbitantly, but there's a fine line between that and barely surviving. |
The problem with market-based approaches to medical research and medicine distribution is that they force people to make economic decisions about their healthcare. Nobody, regardless of their income level, should have to sit down and ask themselves, "Do I want to treat my cancer now, or do I want to buy food for my children?" The same arguments for a universal healthcare system apply to federal funding for medical research. Yes, medical research is expensive; no, we do not want to fund it with a system that denies medicine to people who need it.
I do not want to be overly critical of your startup. Nobody says, "Man, there are too many ways to treat cancer!" On the other hand, your startup does need to bring in enough money to cover its costs, which means you cannot just give your drug to anyone who needs it -- you need to charge them for it. That is why the funding model needs to be overturned, so that the cost of developing the drug is not an issue in getting the drug to people who need it.