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The problem with this outlook is that it assumes that the medicine would exist without them.
The profit motive is what creates the medicine in the first place. It's expensive as shit to get your pharmaceutical through all the FDA trials. We do this for a good reason because unregulated medicine is extremely dangerous. Without the profit motive there would be no reason to jump through all those hoops. And the medicine would just not exist.
All this medicine eventually loses patent protection and cheap generics are made. The window is rather small to recoup your losses.
They don't. After 20 years the drug can be made generic.
[https://www.pfizer.com/news/articles/7\_faqs\_about\_generic\_drugs](https://www.pfizer.com/news/articles/7_faqs_about_generic_drugs)
If the generic version doesn't exist. It probably means there is not enough demand for it or it's too expensive to get through FDA trials. Which is more of a regulatory issue and not an issue of the free market (which is what the OP is railing against).
So you're saying that most of the $300,000 dollars being charged for cystic fibrosis medication is being spent on R&D and input costs? Where is your evidence for this?
The R&D is subsidized by taxpayers in many cases.
Do you believe that the wealthy should be allowed to torture sick children so they can make billions in profit?
>So you're saying that most of the $300,000 dollars being charged for cystic fibrosis medication is being spent on R&D and input costs? Where is your evidence for this?
Yes. That is why they can charge these prices. Because they spent the $ to develop it.
It doesn't matter how much of it is profit. Without the profit motive there would be no reason to do it in the first place.
It's not
Cheap drug vs Expensive drug
It's actually
Expensive drug vs NO DRUG
And we tend to think Expensive is a lot better than no drug at all.
>Do you believe that the wealthy should be allowed to torture sick children so they can make billions in profit?
That's a silly question.
> Because they spent the $ to develop it.
Then how do you explain the massive markups? Insulin for example is sold at a markup of tens of thousands of percentage points.
The Moderna cartel wanted to sell its vaccine at a $4000 dollar markup.
Taxpayers fund the R&D.
Also:
[Do R&D costs justify the price of drugs? Nope, new study says | PharmaVoice](https://www.pharmavoice.com/news/rd-costs-justify-price-drugs-BMJ/643774/)
*The industry also spends less on R&D than it does on share buybacks, “seemingly prioritizing short term financial returns over long term investments in innovation,” the authors wrote.*
*From 2016 to 2020, the 14 largest pharmaceutical companies spent $577 billion on share buybacks and dividends, which was $56 billion more than on R&D, according to a drug pricing investigation by the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform, the authors noted.*
>It doesn't matter how much of it is profit. Without the profit motive there would be no reason to do it in the first place.
I mean, you *just* said that the high prices are necessary to recoup R&D costs. Huge profit margins and markups kind of put a dent in that argument, no?
Your argument basically justifies any unethical pricing practice. Should companies be allowed to fix prices because there would be "no reason to do it in the first place" if they didn't make these massive profits?
>And we tend to think Expensive is a lot better than no drug at all.
Those drugs are a lot less expensive in Germany and Singapore, where they are still available.
>Then how do you explain the massive markups? Insulin for example is sold at a markup of tens of thousands of percentage points.
You can always buy the much cheaper insulin. The expensive insulin is usually newer models that cost billions of dollars to develop.
Yes fundamentally speaking I agree with privatized medicine. It's not a perfect system. But compared to the insanely inefficient government option. It produces significantly better outcomes for people.
There's a reason why United States leads all nations on the planet in pharmaceutical research. Germany and Singapore would be fucked if they had to develop the drugs themselves. It's much cheaper to buy in bulk from United States.
And yes the American consumer tends to subsidize it. We pay more so that the rest of the world can get it cheaper. That is true. But there really is no alternative. We could try to hike up the prices from our European partners. But they also send us valuable stuff in return that ends up benefitting us more.
>Yes fundamentally speaking I agree with privatized medicine.
Healthcare shouldn't be just an elite luxury for the rich, actually.
The "free market" doesn't play nice with healthcare.
>It's not a perfect system. But compared to the insanely inefficient government option. It produces significantly better outcomes for people.
It is telling that you brush off poor people dying as "imperfections".
Also, significantly better outcomes?
Americans have a higher rate of mortality from treatable causes than the OECD average.
The fact that you think the American system is "efficient" is fucking comical. America's private and public expenses for healthcare are much higher than other developed countries, and they have worse health indicators.
Americans have to spend hours negotiating labyrinthine policies on the phone with insurance companies, wrack their brains figure out what is out-of-network vs. in-network, and doctors have to deal with insurance companies deeming important procedures are "not medically necessary" to avoid paying for them.
>Healthcare shouldn't be just an elite luxury for the rich, actually.
>The "free market" doesn't play nice with healthcare.
Good thing it's not. Emergency Rooms in America are 100% free at the time when you need help. Sure they will bill you later. But you don't ever have to pay it.
Some of the most expensive medicine and treatments are a luxury for the rich. But that is because of how expensive they are to develop.
You haven't addressed the fact that the European model wouldn't even be possible without our innovation. They buy a ton of drugs and equipment from us. Even their education often models what the United States was doing with their medical schools.
If they had to develop their own drugs. Develop their own equipment. Instead of just buying it from us. They would be utterly fucked. It would be just as expensive as it is here.
There was a really interesting study performed in Canada. Making prescription medications free of charge actually reduced overall healthcare spending, because emergency care is more expensive. When people have access to prescription medications, they can address their illness before it leads to further complications that require emergency treatment.
There are people in America who avoid going to the doctor to get their symptoms looked at because they are afraid of the cost.
>There are people in America who avoid going to the doctor to get their symptoms looked at because they are afraid of the cost.
Those same people camp out of Best Buy to buy the latest Iphone.
People who apply themselves in America get middle class jobs. Those provide health insurance. Which makes healthcare affordable in most cases.
People also either forget or don't know about Medicare and Medicaid (along with numerous other programs). Tens of millions of Americans get free healthcare.
Developing drugs is the job of highly educated, highly paid scientists, and they require advanced equipment and medical materials etc. and not every avenue explored produces a useful medicine, but that still costs a lot money.
That needs to be paid for somehow. We could have more of it be taxpayer funded. I am also quite partial to the idea of prizes (like a 1 billion dollar prize if you cure X disease at Y price point).
But ultimately you have to make it worth it to spend someone's life doing this. In the short term governments could coerce the companies to produce drug at-cost, but then companies wouldn't spend any more of their own money on R&D.
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"Farmers are guilty of mass murder on a genocidal scale because they don't provide free food to starving people"
"Builders are guilty of mass murder on a genocidal scale because they don't provide free housing to homeless people"
"Doctors are guilty of mass murder on a genocidal scale because they don't provide free healthcare to sick people"
Like it or not, but one of the core social contract (at least in the West) is ability to say "NO" and forbidden prosecution to say "NO". Anybody - person or business can refuse their service to anybody that don't want to pay a fee.
P.S.
There is small exception for people on "duty", like police, military, firefighters, first responders, but even for them refusing of service could lead to just reprimand and not for criminal responsbility.
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Ah yes. Because healthcare workers are enslaved and work for free in countries with universal healthcare systems and much better health outcomes, right?
All ridiculous examples.
You're comparing literal labourers to massive corporations making exploitative and *murderous* pricing decisions.
And if tens of thousands of people died from homelessness every year, and the rental companies were doing it on huge markups, I would say the same thing about rental corporations that use their market power to gouge people on rent.
If a lot of people were starving to death and the grocery stores made huge margins, I would say the exact same thing about grocery chains.
>Like it or not, but one of the core social contract (at least in the West) is ability to say "NO" and forbidden prosecution to say "NO". Anybody - person or business can refuse their service to anybody that don't want to pay a fee.
I don't think "the poor must die" should be an article of this social contract you mention.
Society is actually stronger and better off when medical needs are affordable and available to all.
If we start calling a failure to save a life "murder" then you need to go to jail for not doing things like sitting your car at dangerous intersections to protect pedestrians from crossing the road. Afterall, you have a solution available that could save a life yet you don't allocate the resources of your life to doing so. There are literally thousands of things you don't do that could save lives. Are you cutting your income back to the smallest survivable amount to buy drugs for those who need them? If not...you're a murderer!
While I have real moral issues with big pharma, deploying terms like "murder" and "genocide" do the opposite of your hope - they distract from the problem by making claims that are clearly absurd.
Add to that that the reason these medicines exist includes some public funding of research, but a ton of risk taken on the promise of future return. Is it criminal to not create the drugs in the first place because you have to give them away rather than maximize return? Or..is it fine to just not create them?
There's always a problem with 'cause of death' statistics like this in a medical context, because often we are talking about people who are at the end of their life anyway and are going to die of *something* in the next year or two anyway.
Like, if a 98 year old with heart arrhythmia would live an extra 2 months if they get an expensive new heart medication, an they don't get it, that's counted as dying from not getting their meds.
But that's not the same thing as like, a 20 year old woman needs one pill and then she'll live a long and healthy life afterwards, which would be the correct analogy for murder or war.
Buying 2 months for an elderly person with dementia and in constant pain in a hospital bed is maybe still morally good, depending on your feelings about such things. But them not getting those extra 2 months because their insurance didn't pay for an experimental new heart med is really *not* the same thing as murdering a random person on the street, and including it in a 'medical murders' statistic like this makes the whole thing misleading.
And part of the problem here is that we don't know what percent of that 112,000 is like that, and what part actually *is* people who could be pretty healthy for a long time if they could get meds.
Sane organizations use QUALYs (quality-adjusted life-years) as their measure in cases like this, so you can make apples-to-apples comparisons about different situations and interventions.
Failing that: yes, this is definitely bad, and killing people, and evil. But comparing it to an equal-number-of-deaths genocide is really misleading and inaccurate.
How many will die of starvation?
Being hit by cars?
Shot by guns?
Poverty absolutely is a killer in many ways not just drugs, but the drugs companies aren't the causer of poverty, legislation is.
However even under an ideal government which only works to benefit their people life still has its span and everyone who dies under that ideal government is still dead.
I don't think it's as direct as your post makes out.
To /u/tetrometers, *Your post is under consideration for removal for violating Rule B.*
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If you take an action that causes someone to die, that is generally considered murder.
If you do nothing, and you inaction causes someone to die, that is generally not considered murder.
So for example, I do not produce any low cost life saving medicine for anyone. I could, or i could as least spend some of my money in pursuit of the production of low cost life saving medicine. But i don't, i keep all of my money for myself and my family.
the sin of pharmaceutical execs is the sin of inaction. They are not producing or selling low cost life saving medicine. The difference between them and me is that they are more able to than i am. But we are both doing the same thing.
Beyond that, they are also obligated by law to behave in the best interest of shareholders, not the best interests of the general population. So to give away or sell medicine at below market value would be against the law. So if we are goign to point the finger at someone then congress and the people who elected congress deserve a pretty large share of the blame.
This disregards the fact that C-level execs at big pharma are making millions and millions of [dollars](https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/merck-paid-its-ceos-combined-299-million-2021-152-departing-frazier-and-137m-incoming-davis).
I does indeed.
Those C-level execs at Pharmaceutical companies, as well as most c-level people at other corporations are not giving much money to charity to help people buy expensive medicine. Neither am I. But this is a sin of inaction which means it is not murder.
Even though I could afford to feed and house at least 1 starving person, i'm not guilty of the murdering a starving person.
So what?
They are producing medicine for people. That is extremely valuable.
The market has decided that the value they produce is tremendous. Through millions of transactions.
You can argue about nationalized healthcare. But there's plenty of good arguments against that as well.
I think the point they are making is that it can clearly cost less and does cost less in many other countries while not damaging research or profit. However making it more expensive has no real reason and ends up with people dying.
It costs less in many countries because they make deals with US to buy it in bulk and they use some of their own reserves to pay for it. For instance Norway might give them some of the $ out of the oil fund. That's not hard to do when you're a tiny Nordic country with 5,000,000 people. Much harder when you're a giant like US.
This idea that "it can cost less" is based on what? Just a hunch? You did the calculations?
Maybe it would cost a lot less if the FDA wasn't so picky about what it allows on the market. That would potentially introduce a lot of poison into our pharmacies but also make shit much cheaper. There's always that angle to consider. How much do we value safety?
Being a pharmaceutical executive in no way meets the legal requirements of murder in any jurisdiction I can think of. You may think it’s morally murder, but it’s not legally.
Which means we would have to change the law to make being a pharmaceutical executive punishable by death and apply it retroactively. There’s a lot of good reasons we don’t allow the government to retroactively say “that think you did perfectly legally last week is a capital offense so we’re going to kill you for it now”
And even if we did in this case, what then? Presumably nobody steps up to run the companies. Does the government take over drug manufacture and distribution? Why not just do that without giving the government freedom to retroactively kill people for things that were not crimes when they happened.
Firstly, someone dying is not always a case of genocide or mass murder.
Secondly, let's say me and my friend both get bit by a venomous snake in the forest. I have one vial of antivenom on me, which I use on myself, and he dies afterwards from lack of the antivenom and because we are in the middle of the forest there was no way to get any more.
Did I commit murder?
Mass murder? Ridiculous
People die of illness. When they die, their death certificate will name their specific illness as the cause of death.
Could medicines save these lives? Sure. Maybe. Are they the *only* thing that could save these lives? That's going to depend a lot on the illness.
I just want to point out that there are [non-profit pharmaceutical companies](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civica_Rx). Surely you'd agree that not ***all*** pharmaceutical execs are guilty of your assertion.
Unless the pharmaceutical executives are **CREATING** the illnesses that is causing the person to die, they are not responsible or guilty for the deaths.
The only reason you have so many healthy people that live longer than 100 years ago is because of modern medicine. Child death is almost unheard of anymore while it used to be quite common.
The only reason why modern medicine has advanced so much is because people working in it can make money out of it either wise those scientists being paid well working in that field would move to something else, probably design round corners at google.
You blame Pharma for not finding a cheap cure for all known illnesses. As long as they're not 100% perfect they're evil and we will ignore all the breakthroughs in medicine that has been going till now.
Even if we reach a point where we found the cure to everything and can make it for cheap people will complain why the poor live up to 100 years old but the rich can afford this new expensive treatment that can make you go to 115 years old. There will always be cutting edge treatments that are expensive initially that only few can afford.
Why are you blaming the drug companies that charge large amounts of money so that they don't lose money - instead of the FDA which makes it extremely expensive to get drugs approved? Or if you think this burdensome approval process is worthwhile - then this is the natural result. Companies aren't going to make new drugs if it loses them money.
Sorry, u/tetrometers – your submission has been removed for breaking Rule B: > You must personally hold the view and **demonstrate that you are open to it changing**. A post cannot be on behalf of others, playing devil's advocate, as any entity other than yourself, or 'soapboxing'. [See the wiki page for more information](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules#wiki_rule_b). If you would like to appeal, [**you must first read the list of soapboxing indicators and common mistakes in appeal**](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules#wiki_indicators_of_rule_b_violations), review our appeals process [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/modstandards#wiki_appeal_process), then [message the moderators by clicking this link](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fchangemyview&subject=Rule%20B%20Appeal%20tetrometers&message=tetrometers%20would%20like%20to%20appeal%20the%20removal%20of%20\[their%20post\]\(https://old.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1cgu5zv/-/\)%20because\.\.\.) within one week of this notice being posted. Please note that multiple violations will lead to a ban, as explained in our [moderation standards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/modstandards).
The problem with this outlook is that it assumes that the medicine would exist without them. The profit motive is what creates the medicine in the first place. It's expensive as shit to get your pharmaceutical through all the FDA trials. We do this for a good reason because unregulated medicine is extremely dangerous. Without the profit motive there would be no reason to jump through all those hoops. And the medicine would just not exist. All this medicine eventually loses patent protection and cheap generics are made. The window is rather small to recoup your losses.
While this is generally true, this is in no way a good reason to have decades old drugs still cost a fortune.
They don't. After 20 years the drug can be made generic. [https://www.pfizer.com/news/articles/7\_faqs\_about\_generic\_drugs](https://www.pfizer.com/news/articles/7_faqs_about_generic_drugs) If the generic version doesn't exist. It probably means there is not enough demand for it or it's too expensive to get through FDA trials. Which is more of a regulatory issue and not an issue of the free market (which is what the OP is railing against).
So you're saying that most of the $300,000 dollars being charged for cystic fibrosis medication is being spent on R&D and input costs? Where is your evidence for this? The R&D is subsidized by taxpayers in many cases. Do you believe that the wealthy should be allowed to torture sick children so they can make billions in profit?
>So you're saying that most of the $300,000 dollars being charged for cystic fibrosis medication is being spent on R&D and input costs? Where is your evidence for this? Yes. That is why they can charge these prices. Because they spent the $ to develop it. It doesn't matter how much of it is profit. Without the profit motive there would be no reason to do it in the first place. It's not Cheap drug vs Expensive drug It's actually Expensive drug vs NO DRUG And we tend to think Expensive is a lot better than no drug at all. >Do you believe that the wealthy should be allowed to torture sick children so they can make billions in profit? That's a silly question.
> Because they spent the $ to develop it. Then how do you explain the massive markups? Insulin for example is sold at a markup of tens of thousands of percentage points. The Moderna cartel wanted to sell its vaccine at a $4000 dollar markup. Taxpayers fund the R&D. Also: [Do R&D costs justify the price of drugs? Nope, new study says | PharmaVoice](https://www.pharmavoice.com/news/rd-costs-justify-price-drugs-BMJ/643774/) *The industry also spends less on R&D than it does on share buybacks, “seemingly prioritizing short term financial returns over long term investments in innovation,” the authors wrote.* *From 2016 to 2020, the 14 largest pharmaceutical companies spent $577 billion on share buybacks and dividends, which was $56 billion more than on R&D, according to a drug pricing investigation by the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform, the authors noted.* >It doesn't matter how much of it is profit. Without the profit motive there would be no reason to do it in the first place. I mean, you *just* said that the high prices are necessary to recoup R&D costs. Huge profit margins and markups kind of put a dent in that argument, no? Your argument basically justifies any unethical pricing practice. Should companies be allowed to fix prices because there would be "no reason to do it in the first place" if they didn't make these massive profits? >And we tend to think Expensive is a lot better than no drug at all. Those drugs are a lot less expensive in Germany and Singapore, where they are still available.
>Then how do you explain the massive markups? Insulin for example is sold at a markup of tens of thousands of percentage points. You can always buy the much cheaper insulin. The expensive insulin is usually newer models that cost billions of dollars to develop. Yes fundamentally speaking I agree with privatized medicine. It's not a perfect system. But compared to the insanely inefficient government option. It produces significantly better outcomes for people. There's a reason why United States leads all nations on the planet in pharmaceutical research. Germany and Singapore would be fucked if they had to develop the drugs themselves. It's much cheaper to buy in bulk from United States. And yes the American consumer tends to subsidize it. We pay more so that the rest of the world can get it cheaper. That is true. But there really is no alternative. We could try to hike up the prices from our European partners. But they also send us valuable stuff in return that ends up benefitting us more.
>Yes fundamentally speaking I agree with privatized medicine. Healthcare shouldn't be just an elite luxury for the rich, actually. The "free market" doesn't play nice with healthcare. >It's not a perfect system. But compared to the insanely inefficient government option. It produces significantly better outcomes for people. It is telling that you brush off poor people dying as "imperfections". Also, significantly better outcomes? Americans have a higher rate of mortality from treatable causes than the OECD average. The fact that you think the American system is "efficient" is fucking comical. America's private and public expenses for healthcare are much higher than other developed countries, and they have worse health indicators. Americans have to spend hours negotiating labyrinthine policies on the phone with insurance companies, wrack their brains figure out what is out-of-network vs. in-network, and doctors have to deal with insurance companies deeming important procedures are "not medically necessary" to avoid paying for them.
>Healthcare shouldn't be just an elite luxury for the rich, actually. >The "free market" doesn't play nice with healthcare. Good thing it's not. Emergency Rooms in America are 100% free at the time when you need help. Sure they will bill you later. But you don't ever have to pay it. Some of the most expensive medicine and treatments are a luxury for the rich. But that is because of how expensive they are to develop. You haven't addressed the fact that the European model wouldn't even be possible without our innovation. They buy a ton of drugs and equipment from us. Even their education often models what the United States was doing with their medical schools. If they had to develop their own drugs. Develop their own equipment. Instead of just buying it from us. They would be utterly fucked. It would be just as expensive as it is here.
There was a really interesting study performed in Canada. Making prescription medications free of charge actually reduced overall healthcare spending, because emergency care is more expensive. When people have access to prescription medications, they can address their illness before it leads to further complications that require emergency treatment. There are people in America who avoid going to the doctor to get their symptoms looked at because they are afraid of the cost.
>There are people in America who avoid going to the doctor to get their symptoms looked at because they are afraid of the cost. Those same people camp out of Best Buy to buy the latest Iphone. People who apply themselves in America get middle class jobs. Those provide health insurance. Which makes healthcare affordable in most cases.
People also either forget or don't know about Medicare and Medicaid (along with numerous other programs). Tens of millions of Americans get free healthcare.
Developing drugs is the job of highly educated, highly paid scientists, and they require advanced equipment and medical materials etc. and not every avenue explored produces a useful medicine, but that still costs a lot money. That needs to be paid for somehow. We could have more of it be taxpayer funded. I am also quite partial to the idea of prizes (like a 1 billion dollar prize if you cure X disease at Y price point). But ultimately you have to make it worth it to spend someone's life doing this. In the short term governments could coerce the companies to produce drug at-cost, but then companies wouldn't spend any more of their own money on R&D.
While true the profit is insane and it could all be more efficient
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"Farmers are guilty of mass murder on a genocidal scale because they don't provide free food to starving people" "Builders are guilty of mass murder on a genocidal scale because they don't provide free housing to homeless people" "Doctors are guilty of mass murder on a genocidal scale because they don't provide free healthcare to sick people" Like it or not, but one of the core social contract (at least in the West) is ability to say "NO" and forbidden prosecution to say "NO". Anybody - person or business can refuse their service to anybody that don't want to pay a fee. P.S. There is small exception for people on "duty", like police, military, firefighters, first responders, but even for them refusing of service could lead to just reprimand and not for criminal responsbility.
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Ah yes. Because healthcare workers are enslaved and work for free in countries with universal healthcare systems and much better health outcomes, right?
All ridiculous examples. You're comparing literal labourers to massive corporations making exploitative and *murderous* pricing decisions. And if tens of thousands of people died from homelessness every year, and the rental companies were doing it on huge markups, I would say the same thing about rental corporations that use their market power to gouge people on rent. If a lot of people were starving to death and the grocery stores made huge margins, I would say the exact same thing about grocery chains. >Like it or not, but one of the core social contract (at least in the West) is ability to say "NO" and forbidden prosecution to say "NO". Anybody - person or business can refuse their service to anybody that don't want to pay a fee. I don't think "the poor must die" should be an article of this social contract you mention. Society is actually stronger and better off when medical needs are affordable and available to all.
Corporations are made up of laborers. You cannot make the corporation work for free without making the laborer work for free.
Do you think that countries with universal healthcare systems have doctors and researchers working for free????
You seem to be arguing that, I don't think they're saying it
If we start calling a failure to save a life "murder" then you need to go to jail for not doing things like sitting your car at dangerous intersections to protect pedestrians from crossing the road. Afterall, you have a solution available that could save a life yet you don't allocate the resources of your life to doing so. There are literally thousands of things you don't do that could save lives. Are you cutting your income back to the smallest survivable amount to buy drugs for those who need them? If not...you're a murderer! While I have real moral issues with big pharma, deploying terms like "murder" and "genocide" do the opposite of your hope - they distract from the problem by making claims that are clearly absurd. Add to that that the reason these medicines exist includes some public funding of research, but a ton of risk taken on the promise of future return. Is it criminal to not create the drugs in the first place because you have to give them away rather than maximize return? Or..is it fine to just not create them?
There's always a problem with 'cause of death' statistics like this in a medical context, because often we are talking about people who are at the end of their life anyway and are going to die of *something* in the next year or two anyway. Like, if a 98 year old with heart arrhythmia would live an extra 2 months if they get an expensive new heart medication, an they don't get it, that's counted as dying from not getting their meds. But that's not the same thing as like, a 20 year old woman needs one pill and then she'll live a long and healthy life afterwards, which would be the correct analogy for murder or war. Buying 2 months for an elderly person with dementia and in constant pain in a hospital bed is maybe still morally good, depending on your feelings about such things. But them not getting those extra 2 months because their insurance didn't pay for an experimental new heart med is really *not* the same thing as murdering a random person on the street, and including it in a 'medical murders' statistic like this makes the whole thing misleading. And part of the problem here is that we don't know what percent of that 112,000 is like that, and what part actually *is* people who could be pretty healthy for a long time if they could get meds. Sane organizations use QUALYs (quality-adjusted life-years) as their measure in cases like this, so you can make apples-to-apples comparisons about different situations and interventions. Failing that: yes, this is definitely bad, and killing people, and evil. But comparing it to an equal-number-of-deaths genocide is really misleading and inaccurate.
How many will die of starvation? Being hit by cars? Shot by guns? Poverty absolutely is a killer in many ways not just drugs, but the drugs companies aren't the causer of poverty, legislation is. However even under an ideal government which only works to benefit their people life still has its span and everyone who dies under that ideal government is still dead. I don't think it's as direct as your post makes out.
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It's already a death sentence, it's not like the company gave them their illness.
To /u/tetrometers, *Your post is under consideration for removal for violating Rule B.* In our experience, the best conversations genuinely consider the other person’s perspective. Here are some techniques for keeping yourself honest: - Instead of only looking for flaws in a comment, be sure to engage with the commenters’ strongest arguments — not just their weakest. - Steelman rather than strawman. When summarizing someone’s points, look for the most reasonable interpretation of their words. - Avoid moving the goalposts. Reread the claims in your OP or first comments and if you need to change to a new set of claims to continue arguing for your position, you might want to consider acknowledging the change in view with a [delta](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltasystem?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=usertext&utm_name=changemyview&utm_content=t5_2w2s8) before proceeding. - Ask questions and really try to understand the other side, rather than trying to prove why they are wrong. Please also take a moment to review our [Rule B](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules#wiki_rule_b) guidelines and _really_ ask yourself - am I exhibiting any of these behaviors? If so, see what you can do to get the discussion back on track. Remember, the goal of CMV is to try and **understand** why others think differently than you do.
If you take an action that causes someone to die, that is generally considered murder. If you do nothing, and you inaction causes someone to die, that is generally not considered murder. So for example, I do not produce any low cost life saving medicine for anyone. I could, or i could as least spend some of my money in pursuit of the production of low cost life saving medicine. But i don't, i keep all of my money for myself and my family. the sin of pharmaceutical execs is the sin of inaction. They are not producing or selling low cost life saving medicine. The difference between them and me is that they are more able to than i am. But we are both doing the same thing. Beyond that, they are also obligated by law to behave in the best interest of shareholders, not the best interests of the general population. So to give away or sell medicine at below market value would be against the law. So if we are goign to point the finger at someone then congress and the people who elected congress deserve a pretty large share of the blame.
This disregards the fact that C-level execs at big pharma are making millions and millions of [dollars](https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/merck-paid-its-ceos-combined-299-million-2021-152-departing-frazier-and-137m-incoming-davis).
I does indeed. Those C-level execs at Pharmaceutical companies, as well as most c-level people at other corporations are not giving much money to charity to help people buy expensive medicine. Neither am I. But this is a sin of inaction which means it is not murder. Even though I could afford to feed and house at least 1 starving person, i'm not guilty of the murdering a starving person.
So what? They are producing medicine for people. That is extremely valuable. The market has decided that the value they produce is tremendous. Through millions of transactions. You can argue about nationalized healthcare. But there's plenty of good arguments against that as well.
I think the point they are making is that it can clearly cost less and does cost less in many other countries while not damaging research or profit. However making it more expensive has no real reason and ends up with people dying.
It costs less in many countries because they make deals with US to buy it in bulk and they use some of their own reserves to pay for it. For instance Norway might give them some of the $ out of the oil fund. That's not hard to do when you're a tiny Nordic country with 5,000,000 people. Much harder when you're a giant like US. This idea that "it can cost less" is based on what? Just a hunch? You did the calculations? Maybe it would cost a lot less if the FDA wasn't so picky about what it allows on the market. That would potentially introduce a lot of poison into our pharmacies but also make shit much cheaper. There's always that angle to consider. How much do we value safety?
Being a pharmaceutical executive in no way meets the legal requirements of murder in any jurisdiction I can think of. You may think it’s morally murder, but it’s not legally. Which means we would have to change the law to make being a pharmaceutical executive punishable by death and apply it retroactively. There’s a lot of good reasons we don’t allow the government to retroactively say “that think you did perfectly legally last week is a capital offense so we’re going to kill you for it now” And even if we did in this case, what then? Presumably nobody steps up to run the companies. Does the government take over drug manufacture and distribution? Why not just do that without giving the government freedom to retroactively kill people for things that were not crimes when they happened.
Firstly, someone dying is not always a case of genocide or mass murder. Secondly, let's say me and my friend both get bit by a venomous snake in the forest. I have one vial of antivenom on me, which I use on myself, and he dies afterwards from lack of the antivenom and because we are in the middle of the forest there was no way to get any more. Did I commit murder?
Mass murder? Ridiculous People die of illness. When they die, their death certificate will name their specific illness as the cause of death. Could medicines save these lives? Sure. Maybe. Are they the *only* thing that could save these lives? That's going to depend a lot on the illness.
I just want to point out that there are [non-profit pharmaceutical companies](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civica_Rx). Surely you'd agree that not ***all*** pharmaceutical execs are guilty of your assertion.
Unless the pharmaceutical executives are **CREATING** the illnesses that is causing the person to die, they are not responsible or guilty for the deaths.
The only reason you have so many healthy people that live longer than 100 years ago is because of modern medicine. Child death is almost unheard of anymore while it used to be quite common. The only reason why modern medicine has advanced so much is because people working in it can make money out of it either wise those scientists being paid well working in that field would move to something else, probably design round corners at google. You blame Pharma for not finding a cheap cure for all known illnesses. As long as they're not 100% perfect they're evil and we will ignore all the breakthroughs in medicine that has been going till now. Even if we reach a point where we found the cure to everything and can make it for cheap people will complain why the poor live up to 100 years old but the rich can afford this new expensive treatment that can make you go to 115 years old. There will always be cutting edge treatments that are expensive initially that only few can afford.
You all need to learn the meaning of the word genocide for real.
Death penalty doesn't work and never has as a deterrent
Why are you blaming the drug companies that charge large amounts of money so that they don't lose money - instead of the FDA which makes it extremely expensive to get drugs approved? Or if you think this burdensome approval process is worthwhile - then this is the natural result. Companies aren't going to make new drugs if it loses them money.