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I hope you'll read this Ong
 Originally Posted by OngBonga
Is this not a prime reason medicine should be 100% state controlled? This case pretty much sums up my problem with capitalism. Profit is the motivation here, not public health.
Renton described a situation where the government is the cause of a problem. Your response is to solve the problem of government intrusion with government intrusion.
Originally Posted by OngBonga
I find it hard to believe that people don't see the problem here.
Without profit there is no incentive.
That demonstrates everything wrong with the world we live in.
Please think about what you just said. You have argued for the position you're against. The position you hold is supposed to say "profits don't create incentive".
Originally Posted by OngBonga
Who pays for it here Dan? In the UK, there is a profit cap to stop this very thing from happening. Meanwhile poor people can get the drugs they need on the NHS. It's not a problem here. Yet.
This situation is like if you put a 2 ton dead weight in the trunk of your car and then you say "well the only way to keep the vehicle functioning is to alter its structure and engine". The price control is like making a really really really bad policy into just a really bad policy. The solution isn't to achieve the really bad policy but to avoid the really really really bad policy.
Originally Posted by OngBonga
When we say that profit is the only incentive, we're basically saying that it's only worth our while doing something if it personally benefits us. This is what I mean by "everything that is wrong with the world". Capitalism breeds selfishness, even when it comes to medicine.
I've posted video of Milton Friedman answering this question several times. Adam Smith's most famous quote is about it: "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest." This is an extremely well understood phenomenon in economics. It is covered in literally Chapter 1 in my Econ 101 textbook. A market economy creates a greater amount of good for the people precisely because both producers and consumers act in their own self-interest. The seller wants to optimize his profits and the buyer wants to minimize his costs. A market consists of multiple buyers and sellers, so only the fittest survive.
Why isn't public health an incentive? Why does it take a private company with profit in mind to develop drugs? Why can't a government with public health in mind develop drugs?
Because that incentive is weak. It may not fit your moral ideal, but the reality of the world does not give a fuck what anybody's morals are. History has demonstrated countless times and the academic science known as economics has total consensus that the incentive to create a good for your own purposes and pleasures far outweighs the incentive to create a good for an elusive abstract communal narrative.
Originally Posted by OngBonga
There's a difference between profit and costs, dan. Things like wages and R&D are costs, not profit. Drugs can be sold at a price that covers the costs without the need for shareholders to be paid dividends. When it's in private hands, subject to market conditions, the drugs will be sold at whatever people are willing to pay for it, and when we're talking about life, people will pay whatever they can borrow. The excess isn't helping R&D, this isn't paying doctors' salaries, it's making shareholders rich.
If medicine is in public hands, then drugs will be sold at the lowest price possible to cover costs. It's in a nation's interests to ensure public health is as optimal as can be. There is no need for any other incentive other than public health.
Intro to Microeconomics or Intro to Macroeconomics would disavow you of these false statements.
The economic principles that govern the most trivial of pleasures (like arguing on the internet) are the exact same that govern the most serious of desires (like staying alive). There is an assessment of opportunity cost and marginal benefit for EVERY decision regardless of the fact that typically people aren't cognizant of those things. When those decisions are subsidized and displaced, there is less incentive for frugality, which in turn increases demand and thus raises costs for everybody else. Government subsidized healthcare is extremely expensive in every iteration there is (including NHS), but market ones are several times less expensive. Markets always reduce costs and increase goods relative to government intrusion and subsidization because markets are more capable of achieving efficiency.
Your method has been tried many times and failed so badly that poor health was unfathomable compared to today. While the NHS is an example of this same method, it exists within an economy that engages market principles in enough other ways that the anchor of your healthcare system is only able to have so much negative effect.
Originally Posted by OngBonga
And why is this? Because the top doctors can get paid more privately than by the state, and that is because essential drugs are allowed to be sold privately at profit.
This is false. Medical salaries are enormous precisely because of government. I have given bullet points for why like five or so times on this forum, probably twice in this thread alone. I don't have the time to do it again. Just make sure you acknowledge that governments have many laws on the books that very directly (and many more that do so indirectly) bloat medical salaries. Ever wonder why it's almost impossible to work in medicine without devoting a decade of your life and six figures to the endeavor? It has NOTHING to do with the market of medicine or the skills and desires of the population, but it does have everything to do with laws.
Originally Posted by OngBonga
Umm... the government, obviously. They can still sell the drug at a reasonable price to cover costs. So the net cost, in a perfect world, would be exactly zero. Give or take a billion and we're in business.
This doesn't happen. It never happens in government, but it always happens in markets. Fun that.
Originally Posted by OngBonga
I'm basically talking about removing the profit incentive by having the government invest in all these things, who then recoup their losses through fair pricing. Their incentive is public health. When it's a private investor, he prices the drug to cover costs, and to make profit. His incentive is profit. The latter results in higher pricing of drugs, and the end result is that seriously ill people are at the mercy of hedge fund managers.
How can anyone think this is right?
I explained already some of why this isn't true. I'll add that your version has been and is constantly tried. Your belief is held by the vast majority of people. It is the majority type of policy the world uses. Yet, there is no academic backing for how it has created the goods that consist of our living standards, while there is academic consensus in economics that its functions are what have done so. This is only a debate among non-economists.
Originally Posted by OngBonga
This isn't true at all. I hate the market when it allows hedge fund managers to hold sick people to ransom. We're talking about medicine here, not yachts. I don't see why medicine needs the competition of markets to value it. It's worth whatever the government need to charge to recover costs. JKDS, the taxpayer isn't paying for this, they are investing in it.
idk, I mean I don't really have a problem with private companies where their profit is capped at a reasonable level. It's when sociopaths like this guy take the fucking piss, you really see the ugly side of capitalism.
What you are describing you don't like are monopolistic elements. The solution you are prescribing is an unfettered monopoly.
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