Biotech Values

[jq1234]

But to make vague forecasts about what will happen in ten years is not very useful

I do think longer term thinking is part of investing. Obviously people should focus on short to intermediate term first, but should have some general long term trend in mind. Those trends might change over time, but it is important to be part of consideration.

Simply pointing out that something seems "unsustainable" to you doesn't mean that something has to happen. (Hey, people have been saying for decades now that Japan's debt to GDP ratio--now at 260%--is "unsustainable," but it nonetheless has and is continuing. Will there be a day of reckoning? Of course. But no one knows when exactly that day is coming. Although, Gary Shilling thinks it is very soon. LOL)

Unsustainable means it will happen at some point. No one knows when it will actually happen, but there are threlsholds that point to danger level people should pay attention. You have to look at different situations differently. Japan can have higher debt to GDP ratio than most western countries because most of their debt are financed by very high savings from their own citizen. You can't use US and European metrics to measure Japan. Same with China. That's a different subject. We had gone through dot com and housing bust. The lessions from those events are to never ignore danger threshold. I maybe earlier in both cases, but didn't suffer as much damage either.

I don't think that something "has to give" at all, especially on drug pricing. Drug costs are only about 9% of total health care spending.

I don't agree. Drug cost is easier to rally against. I am not an ideologue. I actually think the end result from the left and right are remarkablely similar, controlling cost either by mandate or by reducing number of people with access to healthcare. I have no interest in making this a political discussion. I do think end of life drug costs are out of whack, going to have correction at some point. I have consciously shifting long term investing more to chronic disease spaces like diabetes in like NVO, AMLN, etc gradually. Either by luck or by design, they have worked out so far, will continue to do so.