Can’t they treat it the old fashioned way, with a heated wire? Or was that just in the movies?
shouldn’t the free market fix this?
It might, if we had one.
The major cost in “developing” a new drug is gaining FDA approval, so there is a free market distortion from the start. Government interference in the insurance markets adds to the distortion. But Obamacare, according to a Big Pharma executive I know, will be the stake through the heart of any future cure. He told me that if you look at the drugs available before the law goes into effect fully, those will be the only drugs you’ll ever see in your lifetime. It stops there.
Not really. New antibiotics are hard to find, and not terribly profitable compared to other drugs – especially considering how well the (for now) existing ones currently work . The Free Market does, of course, want new antibiotics – but nobody really wants to make them, and most can’t afford to. (Discovering new drugs is risky, unpredictable, and hideously expensive.)
We’re probably not going to get a big push towards new antibiotic development until drug resistance becomes a much worse problem than it already is.
This is probably one of those things (Like NASA’s R&D) that really should be a government project – it’s important, and holds great public benefit, but really hard to pitch to investors.
Maybe if, instead, we got the government out of the way, so developing new drugs and medical technologies wasn’t so insanely expensive, we might not have that problem.
There are few things that stifle innovation more than government.
You mean that if you want to avoid a nasty disease you may need to keep it in your pants?
Can’t they treat it the old fashioned way, with a heated wire? Or was that just in the movies?
shouldn’t the free market fix this?
It might, if we had one.
The major cost in “developing” a new drug is gaining FDA approval, so there is a free market distortion from the start. Government interference in the insurance markets adds to the distortion. But Obamacare, according to a Big Pharma executive I know, will be the stake through the heart of any future cure. He told me that if you look at the drugs available before the law goes into effect fully, those will be the only drugs you’ll ever see in your lifetime. It stops there.
Not really. New antibiotics are hard to find, and not terribly profitable compared to other drugs – especially considering how well the (for now) existing ones currently work . The Free Market does, of course, want new antibiotics – but nobody really wants to make them, and most can’t afford to. (Discovering new drugs is risky, unpredictable, and hideously expensive.)
We’re probably not going to get a big push towards new antibiotic development until drug resistance becomes a much worse problem than it already is.
This is probably one of those things (Like NASA’s R&D) that really should be a government project – it’s important, and holds great public benefit, but really hard to pitch to investors.
Maybe if, instead, we got the government out of the way, so developing new drugs and medical technologies wasn’t so insanely expensive, we might not have that problem.
There are few things that stifle innovation more than government.
You mean that if you want to avoid a nasty disease you may need to keep it in your pants?
GASP!