$1,000 Hepatitis Pill Shows Why Fixing Health Costs Is So Hard

Re:$1,000 Hepatitis Pill Shows Why Fixing Health Costs Is So... by waingake on Sunday August 03, 2014 @08:50PM (#8129731)

Taxes obviously. I'd be happy to live in a society where medication research is based on public need instead of profit margin. A drug such as this would save money for the NHS or any other western countries public health system ( bar the USA ) in the long term.

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Re:$1,000 Hepatitis Pill Shows Why Fixing Health Costs Is So... by refurb on Sunday August 03, 2014 @09:00PM (#8129748)

There is nothing stopping the gov't from doing that right now. Unfortunately, most of the drug development efforts by public entities have had a really poor track record.

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Re:$1,000 Hepatitis Pill Shows Why Fixing Health Costs Is So... by bluthru on Sunday August 03, 2014 @10:21PM (#8129977)

>Unfortunately, most of the drug development efforts by public entities have had a really poor track record.

Could you quantify this? Is it because they're tackling the very difficult diseases and not the low-hanging (profitable) fruit?

The polio vaccine was developed with federal money and was provided for free as a result. There is no way the polio vaccine could have been done more efficiently if the private sector did it.

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Re:$1,000 Hepatitis Pill Shows Why Fixing Health Costs Is So... by waingake on Sunday August 03, 2014 @09:08PM (#8129782)

Oh yes I imagine the pharmaceutical industry wouldn't fight such a move at all, would breeze right in.

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Re:$1,000 Hepatitis Pill Shows Why Fixing Health Costs Is So... by refurb on Sunday August 03, 2014 @09:26PM (#8129834)

You talk about the gov't like it's powerless! You do realize that the US gov't extracted billions of dollars in concessions from the pharmaceutical industry during the Obamacare roll-out?

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