They already did. Bristol Myer Squibb acquired the company behind this drug for $14 billion earlier this year.
True, but think about all the people who are fully functioning and productive members of society and got afflicted with this disease. This med will increase the likelihood that they continue to be highly functioning and compliant with the treatment. This will allow them to keep their jobs and cognitive abilities.
Every person I know with this disease has trouble sticking to meds due to side effects, and not sticking to the meds and relapsing multiple times is probably one of the most important reasons that their condition regresses.
Both are recommended. Why? Daily meds are not only effective, but remind the patient that they have an illness that needs daily maintenance, it makes them involved in the treatment. Long acting injectables are added monthly to prevent backslides in case the patient forgets or does not want to take their medicine.
The population suffering these illnesses are already costing the public a lot of money in various forms, it could be worth the investment.
I know plenty of people without mental health issues who can't get jobs that make 20k and I know a few with degrees who can't.
Making healthcare a for-profit venture guarantees that poor people suffer disproportionately. Making chemicals is cheap and most of the innovation happens on government grants and funding. A government run healthcare system is obvious a cheaper solution with less suffering.
This is true of literally every industry; the poor always get less than the rich. Why not nationalize everything so that the poor always get the same as the rich? Surely if the government can run healthcare it can run toy shops and grocery stores.
Capitalism simply doesn't work in an environment where one side has infinite leverage.
These other countries didn't nationalize their industries. They simply use spending controls. The government says we "will pay $X and you can take it or leave it". The US is rather rare in that we say "We will take it no matter the cost".
Companies are more or less greedy in different countries. They are the same companies!
There can be specific individuals or organizations that seek no profit, but they are almost always working with and through other for profit entities.
To say something like an entire industry should be nonprofit is pie in the sky, which is what I am trying to highlight.
Overly broad moral sentiments like people should not seek profit when it comes to healthcare quickly break down when examined in any detail.
I think What people usually mean is simply that they think health insurance should be funded by taxes and accessible to all. Instead of simply saying this, they end up justifying it with overly broad and poorly thought out moral laws.
A kid not getting a toy is sad, but it's not the end of the world. However, healthcare is literally life or death. It makes complete sense to single out healthcare.
This isn't just the NHS, however. Virtually every developed nation's public option, because pretty much all but the US have them, outpaces the US in virtually any metric you can choose.
Not only do we pay much, much more, but we also get lower quality care. We also get slower care. We also get more extreme care.
The core issue with the private sector is they have absolutely zero incentive to provide good care. If they're smart, they should provide suboptimal care and unnecessary care - that way they can get more money in the long run.
The "free market" is not the magic bandaid to fix everything on planet Earth. You HAVE to think about incentives. What will the free market actually do here? Even a cursory, naive analysis will show the free market should promote sickness because sick people don't have options. This doesn't delve into insurance, which quite literally has an incentive to not give out treatment.
Turning away from the elephant in the room because it is "vile" doesn't help anyone and just entrenches the status quo.
If it was taxpayer funded research it would still cost this much.
Who might pay the $20k of course varies a lot, depending on the health care system.
One thing I've learned over the years is to not try "reading between the lines" to suss out what people are "really saying". It's just too error prone, and you rarely end up communicating.
I would think it's plainly obvious that schizophrenic homeless people don't have $20k to spend on anything, so I didn't interpret it that way.
Zyprexa, which was mentioned in the article, is almost always prescribed as generic Olanzapine. Cost as of 2024 for generic - 9 USD, brand name 476 USD.
Are there numbers, for how many homeless people, are suffering from schizophrenia?
I would assume only a very small number of homeless people has the clinical condition, but those who have it, are just very visible. Most homeless people are hidden usually and avoid attention.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6880407/
If I were to guess, I would say that while many people may experience bouts of homelessness, the ones with schizophrenia are more likely to be persistently homeless.
the crisis would look very different if it was just a mix of people dealing with drug addiction (but basically lucid and rational) and with poverty.
Serious drug addicts are seldom lucid and rational.
But I very much do get the point, that solving the schizophrenic problem, would help a lot with everything else. (I am just way more sceptical, that this drug can deliver that)
Not a disease but a real illness, with no cure but treatment like cancer.
Even with effective treatment, sometimes the psychosis wins, and the patient can backslide into full blown illness.
if this pans out the way they hope, by all means give the lead guy a couple yachts or whatever he wants. space tourism, gold statue of himself, whatever. big bonuses all the way down the org chart.
there's the potential to reduce an absolutely staggering amount of human misery here. frankly (again if this pans out) our homelessness crisis would look very different if this drug had existed 20 years ago, when the mechanism of action was discovered.
the people who cared enough and took a huge concentrated risk to do this should just get rich, if in fact it pans out.