I would like you to elaborate a little here because I absolutely see where it makes financial sense to keep someone on something as opposed to ending it. Every aspect of stable ongoing income is better than a one off unless the one off is priced incredibly high....like unattainably for most everyone high. I would think even the insurance folks would want it.....they match premiums to payments.....if I cover an employee and my premiums are X I'd rather cover a med at 0.2X than pay out once at 500-1000X.....they could change jobs or providers at anytime you could have someone that works somewhere 6 months get paid out on a cure that cost 10 years of premiums then go elsewhere.....in that scenario the provider just lost a boat load. I'm not saying the practice is happening, read that again, but just looking at the numbers from a spreadsheet perspective and not knowing the treatment side it monies out. If someone created a cure for something as wide spread, chronic, and complex as say diabetes, just an example not knowing how the ankle bones connected to the knee bone, and came up with a cure and priced it at 500K that would be regulated in a heartbeat......you wouldn't have rich people or people with great insurance free from a chronic common illness and low income folks not if there was a magic bullet in this example throw in that impacts some minorities at higher rates....but daily insulin........ And at the smaller level, again this may not be the best example medically I'm just spit balling.....eczema not going to kill you pain in the rear type thing. I could give you a 1000-2500 shot once or get you on a cream that's $50 every two weeks.....1000-2500 bucks isn't a bar to high....from a pure dollars perspective I know which one I would choose as a business. I would also think the risk of development which is already high would be exponentially greater......I can spend a gozillion dollars working on a cure that may never pass or be price regulated or I can tackle symptoms and have calculated recovery on investment till someone else does better which could be years and I have repackaging options then. Why is the business model different for pharma than other businesses because ongoing income plans are preferred in every other business.
