A subtle milestone on the road to Single Payer, I hope
by Slamfu
To start off I’d like to mention that I am a huge fan of Adam Smith, and of Capitalism in general. I truly see the Capitalist system for all it’s warts as one of the two leading factors that has transformed the world in the last 150 years or so. I can get into that in the comments section later no doubt, but that is my starting point.
I’d like to add that there are many things that don’t fit into the Free Market system, and there seems to be a huge misunderstanding by many people as to what a Free Market system even means. But something happened recently that goes on all the time, and it really exemplifies what happens when you apply Free Market principals to goods and services that are not free market by their nature.
Recently a young wunderkind hedge fund manager, Martin Shkreli, purchased the rights for a drug that’s been around for 60 plus years and it treats a fairly common parasitic condition called toxoplasmosis. After purchasing the rights, he raised the price over 5000%. Here is a link about that, plus his waxing poetic about how he still feels that’s not charging enough.
This guy is showing exactly why we have to get the entire healthcare system away from the Free Market model, which is based around consumers and producers being able to choose their quality, pricing, and needs regarding goods and services. However, if you don’t have a choice about buying something, then it’s not capitalism or a Free Market transaction, it’s good old fashioned extortion. The creep actually had the gall to say that he still thinks the drug is underpriced. And I know his line of thinking. It is the old “what will the market bear?”, and since you’re going to die without my pills, the answer is “how much you got?”
It is exactly this type of thing that socialized medicine puts a stop to. Because healthcare isn’t something can opt out of when you need it. Barring tragedy, we all expect to get old (or are already), we are all going to get sick, we don’t know when it will happen, or how much it will cost to treat. It is the very definition of a social ill and the resource allocation method for it should reflect that.
It is my hope that Mr. Shkreli’s actions, which have not gone unnoticed by the media unlike the countless other moves made by healthcare profit takers, is something that people can understand and hopefully be parlayed into a renewed movement for single payer healthcare. Otherwise our society will continue trying to pound a square peg into a round hole. Consumers being the square peg.