PGS,
Oh please God, not the metaphor of "society" to a "cell." LOLOL
I don't think in the present political/ideological environment that drug pricing will be the easy target that some on this board think that it will be. The drug companies will argue that hitting them on pricing will reduce expenditures on research and development and on innovation. It's a powerful argument. And it resonates with the people who will ultimately be making the decisions, and that's not "society." And you must remember that this isn't England or "the rest of the world." Haven't you heard of "American Exceptionalism." (I'm serious.)
I've had this discussion with my personal physicians. Everyone seems to agree that the first step toward reducing heath care costs begins with keeping people out of hospitals. There are a myriad ways to go about accomplishing this. (Whatever happened to the plan I read about, for instance, to put physician's assistants in all the major pharmacies?) How we accomplish this task is open for discussion.
Without getting political about it, getting access to health care means getting access to health care insurance. How you get the millions of uninsured--who tend to wind up on the hospital doorstep, which is, obviously, not cost-efficient--into the health insurance pool without diminishing the overall quality of health care is a huge challenge. Whatever you consider its merits or lack thereof, the Massachusetts model--Romneycare, if you like--will be the jumping off place for discussions. Smaller states, e.g., Vermont and Oregon, will probably move soon to some variation of this model. I'm not sure if it has any hope of working in a state like my home state of California. On the federal level, I don't think we need to re-visit the question of Obamacare on this board.
I understand on a discussion board devoted to investment in biotech stocks that the question of drug pricing has come to the forefront. The point I was trying to make is that I don't think a NICE-like model is in the cards for the U.S. Reasonable people can disagree on this.
And I wasn't trying to be snarky with you.You know I would never do that with you...well, except in jest. LOLOL I do think, though, that people in the sciences have a tendency to make use of rather meaningless abstractions when it comes to talking about social/political issues--issues that they tend to be less familiar with, although they won't admit this, because most intellectuals tend to consider themselves knowledgeable in the "soft" sciences--without taking into account the hierarchical structures that make up any social system. In our social system that means we must take into account not only the distribution of political power, but also, and more fundamentally, the way class and racial divisions structure the distribution of political power.
If science and even economically-oriented types want to make assertions like "Something has to change," or "It's unsustainable," they have to at least make reference to the specific agencies of change, not abstractions like "society," that can make the system more sustainable. This requires a discussion far, far beyond the scope of this board. But I will make the point that these agencies are incredibly different here in the U.S. than they are in any other part of the world.
Bladerunner
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