AlisonW ♿🏳️‍🌈♾️Dec 20, 2023
Proposal: Drug prices can never be raised after introduction, only reduced.
Reasoning: Stop profiteering; the greater the volume produced the lower the unit price.
Show threadCharlie StrossDec 20, 2023
@AlisonW There are supply chain complications—many medicines rely on incredibly hairy international supply chains of exotic ingredients, often produced by a single factor in a distant country and prone to supply interruptions like random floods or fires—but agreed, measures to suppress profiteering would be good.
Show threadChris Belanger has moved
@cstross @AlisonW I'd like to see a ban on pharmaceutical companies being publicly traded. God knows non-profits are far from perfect, but remove the concept of a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders and focus on delivering quality medicine
Dec 20, 2023 at 8:22pmWeb
Show threadCharlie StrossDec 20, 2023
@Feasoron @AlisonW Don't even need to ban them from being publicly traded (although I'm in favour of limiting/banning public corporations entirely) ... but we need to take the profit motive out of medicine completely. Non-profit or charitably status only, in other words—not just for pharmaceutical manufacturers, but hospitals, surgeries, dentists, opthalmologists, care homes, *everything*.
Show threadWilfried KlaebeDec 20, 2023

@cstross This. So much this. Fair pay to all that work there, doctors, nurses, scientists, janitors, you name it, but no extraction of value. Medical insurance should also be prohibited from paying dividends or anything like that.

@Feasoron @AlisonW

Show threadJohan DiederikDec 21, 2023
@Feasoron @AlisonW @cstross You are so absolutely right! Every real doctor is content with a normal salary. Only the bad ones demand more.
Show threadCharlie StrossDec 21, 2023
@JohanDiederik @Feasoron @AlisonW A big chunk of the reason for high salary expectations in medicine is down to the US student loans system—MDs start work a quarter million in debt for their education. (So: education should be free at the point of delivery, funded from tax revenue.)
Show threadJohan DiederikDec 21, 2023
@cstross @AlisonW @Feasoron Ja, that’s a different situation in US. a quarter of million in debt is extreme for Dutch standards. The pressure on med. students is equally high, I am sure of. The system is rotten. Politicians don’t want to burn their hands and that is even more evil.
Show threadChris Belanger has movedDec 21, 2023
@JohanDiederik @cstross @AlisonW Also, I wasn't talking about paying a single employee a penny less or cutting any healthcare jobs (the cost of "administration" in healhcare is a slightly different, highly related, topic). I'm saying that if you don't need excess profits and growth paid to shareholders you change the incentive structure of the industry.