Is Curing Patients a Sustainable Business Model?

This is for topical issues effecting our fair world... you can quit snickering anytime. Note: It is the desire of the leadership of SFDebris Conglomerate that all posters maintain a civil and polite bearing in this forum, regardless of how you feel about any particular issue. Violators will be turned over to Captain Janeway for experimentation.
Post Reply
Fuzzy Necromancer
Overlord
Posts: 6316
Joined: Wed Mar 15, 2017 1:57 am

Is Curing Patients a Sustainable Business Model?

Post by Fuzzy Necromancer »

Goldman Sachs fucker points out that curing people is a bad business model for medicine.
This is why I hate capitalism.
http://www.wnd.com/2018/04/goldman-sach ... ess-model/
"Believe me, there’s nothing so terrible that someone won’t support it."
— Un Lun Dun, China Mieville
User avatar
ORCACommander
Officer
Posts: 209
Joined: Sat Feb 11, 2017 4:06 am

Re: Is Curing Patients a Sustainable Business Model?

Post by ORCACommander »

you know this is something we have known for a long time its just that until now the power that be were smart enough not to point it out
User avatar
CharlesPhipps
Captain
Posts: 4951
Joined: Wed Oct 04, 2017 8:06 pm

Re: Is Curing Patients a Sustainable Business Model?

Post by CharlesPhipps »

Yes, I agree.

Which is why we shouldn't have medicine as business.
User avatar
Steve
Doctor's Assistant
Posts: 554
Joined: Sat Jan 14, 2017 7:03 pm

Re: Is Curing Patients a Sustainable Business Model?

Post by Steve »

Business does tend to make a lot of money, which makes R&D easier. Although really, this seems like a "no duh" thing. Yeah, if you cure someone of an affliction, they no longer need that particular medicine. OTOH, said affliction will undoubtedly appear in others, plus I doubt this medicine is a company's only product, so if they ever get another condition, they'll probably remember how well your other medication worked.

This is the kind of thing that a company takes a meager profit, or even a loss, on, because the gain of not looking like asses profiting off the sick and dying is worth said financial loss.

But that would require corporate managers to be smart and not devoted to short term earnings, wouldn't it?

Sometimes, capitalism is its own worst enemy, and I say that as someone who disagrees with socialism as a proposed alternative system.
"No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism." - Sir Winston L. S. Churchill, Princips Britannia

Administrator of SFD, Former Spacebattles Super-Mod, Veteran Chatnik. And multiverse crossover-loving writer, of course!
Fuzzy Necromancer
Overlord
Posts: 6316
Joined: Wed Mar 15, 2017 1:57 am

Re: Is Curing Patients a Sustainable Business Model?

Post by Fuzzy Necromancer »

Well, the problem is, Managers can do things that create short-term profits while ruining the company in the long run, then sell their stock options and jump ship before everything goes wahooney-shaped. And what's more, this is exactly the behavior that will bring them praise and acclaim in their field. "He must be a great CEO because that company failed without his leadership!"

"looking like asses profiting off the sick and dying" is no longer a weakness for a corporation in America. At best, it's something people are overlooking because their swimming in corruption and our leaders have stopped even pretending they aren't Captain Planet villains. At worst, it's something that people will celebrate as good business sense and rugged individualism. Murica!
"Believe me, there’s nothing so terrible that someone won’t support it."
— Un Lun Dun, China Mieville
User avatar
CharlesPhipps
Captain
Posts: 4951
Joined: Wed Oct 04, 2017 8:06 pm

Re: Is Curing Patients a Sustainable Business Model?

Post by CharlesPhipps »

There's been massive fraud along these lines in business.

1. Vitamins may not actually do anything good for anyone. Multi-billion dollar industry. Recent studies seem to indicate that you usually get the majority of what you need from a healthy meal and more of them don't help anything if not are outright unhealthy.

2. The addictiveness of opioids was dramatically understated by pharmaceutical companies because of the monetary benefits of addiction.

Medical quackery is one of the oldest scams there is.
Post Reply