
Taxpayers Fund Cancer Study, but Profit Will Be Private - sethbannon
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/12/19/health/harnessing-the-us-taxpayer-to-fight-cancer-and-make-profits.html
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Eridrus
There are a few markets where people's demand are very inelastic: food,
housing, health care.

Food has gotten cheaper because competition is trivial.

Housing is becoming more and more expensive since it's a positional good and
we have been doing our best to make sure supply doesn't increase.

And healthcare costs are being held high due to monopoly rights in the form of
patents and drug companies' general unwillingness to compete with each other.

In light of all this saying that pricing is a question for the marketplace
seems naive at best.

The part about companies not being willing to invest is true, but maybe that
means we should stop relying on them for this; the Drugs for Neglected
Diseases initiative (DNDi) has been doing a lot of good by focusing on drugs
that drug companies are not interested in since there is not a large enough
profit motive. Maybe that should be a model for taking publicly funded
research and bringing it to market.

