Comment on Moderna’s mRNA cancer vaccine works even better than thought

• xenspidey@lemmy.zip ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Depends on how much time was spent on R&D. You have to recover those costs. I know everyone wants everything for free but it takes a fuck ton of man hours and tons of investments to get to this point. You can’t just give it away unfortunately.

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  • I_Fart_Glitter@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Did they pay for their own R&D? Usually that get socialized and then the profits are privatized, it’s the American Way.

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    • Cannonhead2@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I like to shit on big pharma as much as the next guy, but in this case, yes they do. Developing new drugs is a ludicrously risky and expensive venture, typically costing billions of dollars. Sometimes it may be subsidized somewhat, sure, but the vast majority of it is coming out of pocket for these companies.

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      • Tinidril@midwest.social ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Sometimes it may be subsidized somewhat, sure, but the vast majority of it is coming out of pocket for these companies.

        You seem awfully sure about that. What are you basing it on? MRNA research alone was massively funded with taxpayer money. Coding for new proteins is almost trivial compared to what went into developing the technology.

        healthpolicy-watch.news/u-s-government-invested-3…

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  • ricecake@sh.itjust.works ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    You actually can. The simplest way is to literally just give the research away and charge a fair price for the medicine. That’s allowed.

    The slightly more capitalist way would be to sell the rights to the government to recoup costs.

    The slightly less capitalist way is for the government to notify you that you don’t own it anymore because of the public good.

    This is also ignoring exactly how much the public already funds the basic research that goes into pharmaceuticals, which is quite a bit more than you might expect, so the argument of what’s even “fair” is less clearly in favor of the company than you might expect.

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    • jj4211@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      There’s a tricky balance.

      For every endeavor that could recoup its costs in a fairly reasonable way, there are several other attempts that end in failure.

      If you know that best case your project can be modestly better than break even, but it will most likely completely fail, would you invest in it?

      I could respect an argument for outright socializing pharmaceutical efforts and rolling the needs into taxes and cutting out the capitalist angle entirely, but so long as you rely on capitalist funding model in any significant amount, then you have to allow for some incentive. When the research is pretty much fully funded by public funds, that funding should come with strings attached, but here it seems the lead up was largely in capitalist territory.

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      • Neekaneeka@lemmynsfw.com ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Your answers are very speculative when they could easily be verified.

        How big are the operating loans of a pharmaceutical company? Specifically those who mature over the course of a development cycle?

        Construction is commonly financed through loans which get covered in the sales price, so it’s a tried and true method with foreseeable margins and robust risk assessment. And notably covered in the annual reports of their finances.

        I find it hard to believe pharmaceuticals should be very different, and the lack of receipts makes it very dubious that’s the costs they’re covering.

        You made the claim though, please provide some evidence to back it up.

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  • sartalon@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I use to agree with you but that metric sailed a long to me ago. All pricing, everywhere now, is based on how much they think people will pay, not cost plus a reasonable profit.

    A $1300 iPhone probably cost around $200 to actually produce, and that covers development.

    Any cost savings on production, or cheaper materials, is profit passed on to the stockholder. It does not go to workers and certainly does not go to a cheaper sales price.

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  • SatansMaggotyCumFart@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Would somebody think of the poor pharmaceutical executives?

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  • pixxelkick@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    True, but individuals dont have to pay for that. This is 100% something that can be taxpayer funded as it pretty much benefits everyone.

    Otherwise, it just becomes a penalty for poor people and another luxury for the rich.

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    • overzeetop@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Nearly all of the basic research is already taxpayer funded through research grants. There are still development costs (especially trials and such), but most of the money spent my large pharmaceutical companies goes into marketing. (it’s been a few years, but last time I looked in the mid-teens it was more than 50% of their overall budget iirc)

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  • shalafi@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    You’re not going to get a sympathetic ear around here. Lemmy wants everything for free. Bunch of children watching capitalism literally burn the world down, but has no clue that nice things cost effort, and effort = $.

    Now if you want to talk about making drug advertisements illegal, I’m all in. Wouldn’t that make a wonderful impact? Make big pharma put the money into R&D that they put into ads.

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    • luthis@lemmy.nz ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      That’s what my taxes are for. I rarely pay more than $5 for medication, if anything. I also pay significantly less in taxes than US citizens and have less potholes in the roads.

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  • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Yeah; it’s not like it’s insulin.

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• FaceDeer@kbin.social ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  So if this happens exactly as you describe, the net result will be a cancer treatment that is way more reliable and causes way less suffering than the existing treatments, and is slightly cheaper to boot?

  That sounds awesome!

  In reality they'll likely reduce the price more than that, because the balance between the supply/demand curve will likely give them even more profit if they drop it down farther. More people will be able to afford it so it'll create a bigger market. And then in a few years competitors will start coming out with their own mRNA cancer treatments and competition will start pushing it down even more.

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  • overzeetop@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    No it will be more expensive. The pricing would be based on how much it currently costs, priced competitively (95% of, say, $500,000) and then they’d add $500,000 to account for the fact that you would recover more of your life and avoid suffering, so $950k total. Of course they may simply price is based on the value of your life. Say the average value of a human is $1.5M in a typical wrongful death suit; they might price it at $1.25M - a bargain!.

    Before you laugh at my logic, I’ll point out that Luxturna priced their retinal degeneration drug based on how much value courts placed on lost eyesight. They found that to be around the million-dollar range. The price of treatment was then set at $850,000, because that’s clearly providing value over the monetary equivalent of loss of eyesight (Jeffrey Marrazzo, CEO, was quoted in an interview that this was the basis). Of course, there’s an evilly fun MBA discussion to be had, as well, as your pricing could also be how much it’s worth to a parent not to have to watch their children slowly and unavoidably go blind as they become teenagers. Other drugs are often based on the cost avoidance or value of human life of 100-150k per year, and I’m sure they will argue that a cure should account for the entire life amortization of such a cost. Maybe it will be $5M for someone in their 20s, but only $500k for someone in their 70s.

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    • FaceDeer@kbin.social ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      If this is how they price these things, then why wasn't cancer treatment already $1.25M? Did they only just now realize how much they could squeeze out of people?

      Luxturna's treatment is for a very rare form of blindness. Unfortunately treatments for rare diseases tend to be very expensive because of how R&D and the market works, there's much less opportunity to spread out the cost and mass production never happens. Melanoma is not a rare disease, unfortunately quite the opposite. Cancer in general even less so.

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      • overzeetop@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        In many cases,in the US, the rack rate for a full course of a serious cancer is easily the $500k I suggested and frequently more than double that. My treatment for a suspected single point melanoma was close to $75,000 and it was a single outpatient procedure with a pre- and post-op office follow up. No chemo, no stage designation, nothing - zero cancer found at the site of the questionable biopsy site.

        It’s true the Luxturna is an odd case (though the OP article is talking about customized treatment so it is appropriate here). It’s not the disease or cure but the justification of how they determined the cost of their treatment. Not based on the research cost or market, not based on the production or application of the treatment, but on the value of your eyesight they would be preserving.

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