Nice. I may be going that route soon depending on what happens here… I certainly value the hims model. I was really only slightly overweight, I mostly wanted to try it because I’ve heard it can help alcohol problems and I didn’t want to go to my doctor and be like please give me this so I drink less, and instead get referred to AA or something. It has definitely helped if for no other reason than the fact that I just can’t stand to intake that many calories. This stuff is truly kind of a miracle drug. Just hopeful I don’t get kidney cancer or something in 20 years…

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They don’t have anywhere near the infrastructure nor regulatory arm to even begin to bring a drug over the FDA finish line. I’ve participated in my fair share of PDUFAs; it’s a fucking beast.

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Sounds like a drug needed on here for us degenerates. Sounds like a future collab

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The real money is in robbing drug dealers

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My “anecdotes” are lived experiences. While Americans may be in general less healthy that does not excuse basic services like an epidural being administered by someone making over half a million a year with 3 months of vacation(again lived experience my literal next door neighbor is a doctor who I am very close to). Or maybe the owner of my company receiving 60k a month from a local health group for “consulting about how they can implement AI into their business”. Jokes on them the guy can’t even use the office printer and shows up 1 hour a week. It’s because his wife is a high up executive. This fool literally asked if we actually need SCREWS to finish a job. We build tooling for manufacturing. Yeah boss I’ll glue it together. Or maybe the time a customer told us to triple the quote and send it back to them because the medial manufacturing company it’s for “does not know better”. The whole system is filled with grift but surely there is nothing we can do lessen the cost of developing a new drug. End of story yeah we will never meet in the middle on this if you are actually foolish and greedy enough to believe it’s the only path forward and there can be nothing done to bring down cost. That somehow Americans can spend a two months salary in an afternoon at the ER and how that is somehow sustainable.

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Hims will blatantly copy/steal another drug that helps with heart attacks next

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>Drugs cost several to hundreds of times what our peers pay for the same or equivalent drug. Yes, because we are the profit center for these drugs. >Medical insurance let alone care gets more unaffordable by the year. Medical insurance has gotten more expensive because medical care usage has gotten more expensive. Net margins on pharmaceuticals, healthcare products, hospitals, etc. are effectively unchanged over the last 25 years. Turns out when people consume more healthcare, get unhealthier, and consumer *more advanced* healthcare, it gets more expensive both to provide and to insure. Not a difficult concept to understand. >(My health premiums are over $1400 a month for a family of 3 right now 3X last years rates). Your anecdote isn't really relevant to the overall conversation, and I cannot comment on your situation without knowing *all* of the facts around your particular coverage, which I'm unlikely to get from you as an obviously biased source. >A trip the ER can cost literal thousands of dollars an hour even if you have health insurance and have a relatively minor issue like monitoring you after a mild seizure. Yes, if you have not hit your deductible and have high out of pocket maximums. >Need an appointment for a Chronic health condition? Oh that will be 6 months for an appointment. All of the issues you've listed seem to be problems you have with your health insurance. I have no idea what your options were. I've never known anyone to have that long of a wait for a specialty appointment, and I know people with chronic conditions on Medicaid, Medicare, and employer insurance. >Oh you need insulin and your doctor said you need to test x times a day? Well the insurance company only believes you should test 2 times a day better start to ration and risk your literal life sorry. If you're going to make arguments for or against a system, you need to start coming with data-based arguments. You seem to be arguing about anecdotes that *you* have faced personally. Not only does that make you an incredibly biased source, but also exposes your argument to *your choices*. It is entirely *possible*, for example, for you to have chosen the absolutely shittiest plan possible and then gotten upset at the cost when something actually goes wrong with your health. If you want to have an actual discussion on healthcare, fine - I'm open to it. But you have got to do better. I'm not going to sit here and argue with someone's anecdotes. *Anyway*, [here's a place for you to start.](https://randomcriticalanalysis.com/why-conventional-wisdom-on-health-care-is-wrong-a-primer/) This provides actual data (sourced from places like the OECD) and makes a fairly convincing argument that the US is not really out of line with the rest of the world on healthcare spending, we just are unhealthier, consume way more healthcare, and are richer (and thus dedicate larger portions of our disposable income to 'luxury' healthcare).

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The research is <1% of the cost to bring a drug to market though.

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Lol if you think the current trajectory for health care in America is anything short of a runaway train. Drugs cost several to hundreds of times what our peers pay for the same or equivalent drug. Medical insurance let alone care gets more unaffordable by the year. (My health premiums are over $1400 a month for a family of 3 right now 3X last years rates). We get the healthcare through a local school district. Surely a teacher getting paid $21 an hour can afford that right? That same insurance company fought me for 8 months before they paid the first bill after my daughter’s birth. The excuse they made? Well maybe another insurance company is responsible instead …kick the can down the road for months and hope it goes away. We almost stopped receiving primary care for an infant due to unpaid bills. A trip the ER can cost literal thousands of dollars an hour even if you have health insurance and have a relatively minor issue like monitoring you after a mild seizure. Need an appointment for a Chronic health condition? Oh that will be 6 months for an appointment. Oh you need insulin and your doctor said you need to test x times a day? Well the insurance company only believes you should test 2 times a day better start to ration and risk your literal life sorry. Healthcare is only working for you if you are wealthy. If you have a median sized w2 you are fucked.

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>Why should a paramedic get paid less than a livable wage to scrape you off the ground and try to rush you to the ER while providing life saving care? Real answer is: 1. Paramedics *do* get a **livable** wage, even if it isn't a high wage. 2. The supply of potential EMTs is high relative to the demand for them. It's a job with a *relatively* low barrier to entry and is a lifestyle that is somewhat desirable (working hours/days are staggered so you get more days off, decent amount of downtime during work hours, etc.), so there are lots of potential EMTs. >If you need billions to do something maybe you are just not good for society period. What an absolutely moronic take lol. Cost too high = not worthwhile is maybe the worst criteria imaginable. Plenty of hugely beneficial things are incredibly expensive. Power plants cost billions of dollars, guess electricity is bad for society. And if you're speaking strictly profit, the same concept applies. There is actual risk associated with operating businesses. If there is not an incentive of profit of billions of dollars, why would companies risk billions of dollars in the first place? The risk adjusted return for pharmaceuticals isn't blown out compared to other industries. It's a higher risk industry. >Maybe it’s time to rethink the entire cost structure of drug production and creation. Possibly, but simply saying *hurr durr patent infringement good actually* is not the solution. >Maybe a lot of people along the way don’t need to be paid what they are. *Need* is a weird word to use. No one *needs* more than probably like $25-30k/yr. But plenty of people have skills that are in demand and worth more than that. If you don't pay people what their skills are worth, they'll go do other things with their time. And then - surprise! - fewer drugs get created. If you stop incentivizing something, it stops happening. >Maybe the current structure leads to more harm than good Does it? A ton of drugs have been invented due to this structure, saving likely more lives than exist in the US in total over the last, say, half century.

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