Biotech Values

[iwfal]

PGS, sorry to have to alert you that "society" is a meaningless abstraction, useful for lazy intellectuals--usually liberal ones, I hate to say--who refuse or are unable to theorize the societal forces, economic, political, ideological, that comprise that abstract unity that they call "society."

In the present political and ideological configuration, there is no way in the world that the trajectory of costs will be be tamed by plans which in any way infringe on the profit margins or economic prerogatives of the hospital/industrial/insurance/pharmaceutical complex.

At some point politics gets rudely trumped by hard physics. Financial physics is a little squishier, but I think we all recognize that at some point even that has its limits. E.g. In 2005 it was pretty obvious that the housing market was going to smash itself on financial physics in the then near future. Sometime in the next 1 to 5 years. But the politicians behaved as if politics could push that impact continually down the road. Sure, the impact for medical costs will be less spectacular because it isn't currently as highly leveraged. But I'd bet there will be a crash some time in the next 20 years and 5 years before it happens everyone will say we don't have the politics in place to make the change - yet we will because some part of the system will force us to by crashing.