Comment by anonymouskimmer
10 hours ago
If a person dies from a disorder in their 20s, they'll never buy your heart medication in their 70s. Today's patient is tomorrow's patient.
10 hours ago
If a person dies from a disorder in their 20s, they'll never buy your heart medication in their 70s. Today's patient is tomorrow's patient.
The longer someone lives, the more potential value they can contribute to a society. The opportunity cost is something we've figured out from a medical perspective, but shareholders want returns today, not returns fifty years from now.
That is what we need to address.
The government says that people can stop contributing to society when they reach 67. Some governments completely block you from continuing working.
Some governments recognize that the longer people life, the more pensions / social security / healthcare resources need to be paid to that person.
its much cheaper for governments for people to just die when they retire, tax their wealth at 40% and then free up resources (housing or healthcare) for the next generation.
It’s odd because many other industries like wineries, nut orchards, etc. do all play the long term game successfully.
Even medical drugs take a while to develop but somehow the sales has to be “right now”.
>The longer someone lives, the more potential value they can contribute to a society.
This is questionable. Highly populous countries have worse living conditions than moderately populous ones, currently.
> Highly populous countries have worse living conditions than moderately populous ones, currently.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population-density-vs-pro...
There does not look to be a strong correlation between population density and income, at least on a log-log scale across countries. But I would guess that these numbers hide a trend for cities to be richer than rural areas (subsistence farming etc).
Highly populous countries were colonized and robbed off their resources until recently.
Better living conditions cost more money per family, which leads to less children.
The longer someone lives, the more potential value can be squeezed.
This is how they should think.
I don't like the squeezing mindset but if people contribute to their health insurance and don't use those services because they're healthy it could be seen as squeezing those patients but it really isn't, it's just how insurance should work.
They could use profit in 50 years, but it will possibly be someone else's profit.
If the executive lives longer it is their profit.
1 reply →
>The longer someone lives, the more potential value they can contribute to a society.
This is a function of how old the sick person is, as well as how severe their sickness and hence recovery will be. The data says, for the most part, healthcare is needed when one is close in age to exhausting their body’s capability anyway.
Treat vs cure. You treat them so you can go on treating them. If you cure them, maybe you’ll treat them later and or maybe you won’t - but that’s outside the current bonus cycle / opportunity window.
That is not the alternative to curing disease that is being proposed. The choice is between healing for good or keep on continued medication.
Or more bluntly: sell a product or sell a subscription
Yeah, maybe not cure them as such, maybe just get them to a healthy-enough state to go back to functioning but still needing The Medication.
The issue with that logic there is those basic drugs are mostly generic now. That money is less, and goes to the PBM and generic manufacturers in India.
The FDA needs to declare death a disease that patentable drugs can be developed against. All of a sudden the flood gates get opened to encouraging drug research on anything that keeps people alive longer.
I quite like this concept. Did you come up with it?
No, it is a common trope in futurism circles.
Because death is not technically a disease, right now if a company came up with a literal immortality pill they wouldn't be able to get it patented or get FDA approval for it.