Microblog Memes

Or they're illnesses and conditions primarily affecting women.

Chronic fatigue has only since covid (when men started reporting constant excessive tiredness) been started to be treated like a real thing by doctors. And it's still barely considered by most doctors.

Endometriosis is another 'chronic' womens condition that has only very recently started being researched properly and taken seriously. And again, it's still incredibly hard to get taken seriously and helped if you suffer from it.

See also the massive discrepancy between autism and adhd diagnosis in men and women, and with bpd diagnosis between women and men.

On a somewhat less severe side of things, lack of libido in women is still considered a jokey non-issue by most doctors but viagra has been on the market for decades for men.

There's a lot more but I'm too tired to keep writing this.

Still relevant comic.

There's a lot of work/investment into curative cell and gene therapies that are very promising! Some have already received FDA approval with high success rates of curing some childhood cancers and sickle cell disease

The original “this doesn’t need to be a subscription”

Did you confuse capitalism with morality again?

This has got to stop happening

Ah yes that's why incredibly breakthroughs in medical science have completely stopped happening!

It's also why so many really good TV shows and series get canceled.

The money is not being invested to create an art project.

It's being invested in hopes of a gigantic return, and the instant it seems like there will not be a gigantic return the money goes away.

That's why you do not often see several hundred million dollar productions of original material unless it's a passion project for a specific director or studio.

That's why we've had, what is it, 10 Spider-Man movies in the last 25 years?

I get you can't just throw money away but I feel like there should at the very least be some sort of clause and a contract that says that if your show gets canceled then you will be provided the timing and funding to either finish up the season that you are in and provide a finale or two at the very least provide a finale.

There is a film from 1995 which is literally about companies trying to prevent a cure from getting out since it would interfere with their ongoing treatments.

It's an entirely efficient way to allocate resources if the goal is "shareholder enrichment".

Ladies and gentlemen, the evergreen Christopher Julius Rock: https://youtu.be/fzzqayKwWeY

Now let me preface this by saying "I hate Trump"

One of the few things that I have hope for with the proposed cuts to the FDA is that is wont cost as much money to research possible treatments/drugs/cures so the lower profitability drugs and treatments might actually get a look in. Not saying the drugs companies arent predatory AF but spending hundreds of millions to make tens of millions is just bad business.

Ok, Sherlock.

A cure for a chronic illness could be plenty profitable if we had a free market.

Like, people can make money actually repairing cars. Even though a car that leaks oil could be a constant revenue center for someone selling oil, someone else can actually make a profit fixing oil leaks.

The fact that selling a continuous stream of oil to someone with a leaky engine does not automatically imply that fixing the leak isn’t profitable.

This sort of “X is more profitable so Y doesn’t happen” thing only actually causes Y to not happen when the market isn’t free.

If one company — via government-enforced monopoly — controls motor oil sales and oil leak fixing, then that one company can nix the permanent repair market in order to maximize profits from selling motor oil. But that’s not a free market.

It’s the fact our medical market is so tightly, centrally controlled that makes less-profitable things like preventing diabetes impossible. That kind of niche elimination is a property of a centrally-controlled market, not a property of an actually free market.

We have a free market for clothes. That means: (a) anyone who can sew cloth together can sell clothes, (b) anyone who can acquire clothes for cheap and sell them slightly higher can sell clothes, (c) anyone with money can buy clothes at any time from anyone. I can buy clothes from my neighbor if I want. I can donate old clothes to Goodwill and others can buy them cheaper than new. I can own 500 pairs of jeans if I feel like it, or wear nothing but sweatpants simply because I feel like it.

Imagine if you needed a prescription from a clothing consultant before you could buy a jacket, or a shirt. That’s not capitalism. That’s not a free market.

Just because money is exchanged for healthcare in the USA does not mean we have a free market for healthcare. We do have a market in healthcare; we do not have a free market in healthcare.

If we had a free market for healthcare, I’d be able to buy chemistry equipment and make whatever anti-cancer drugs people need and undercut other manufacturers. I’d be able to just go pay a hundred bucks to use an MRI machine or an x-ray machine, without needing to pay money to see a doctor first and get their okay for the scan. I’d be able to just go buy wellbutrin for $15 instead of paying my psychiatrist $100 every two weeks to check in and see if it’s still working.

We do not have anything even remotely resembling a free market for healthcare. We really, really need one though.

Would that be called profitalism?

You get what you pay for, in a sense. How would the public respond to a one-time cure being sold for more than the total lifetime cost of treatment? Not well, but the thing is that responding like that is effectively expressing a preference for the lifelong treatment.