by mystraline | 2025-08-04 20:42:52+00:00
> There absolutely is a difference between people that die because we, as a species, cannot afford to spend the combined sum of all of our productivity on health care (which means that you will have to tell some people "no", even though they will die as a result of that), and a tyrannical dictator specifically ordering the death of people because they are a political threat to him.

I remember the howls of 'Death Panels' when Hillary Clinton brought forth a single payer universal healthcare back in 1995 as first lady.

I also remember the counter republican / Heritage foundation's plan of a health marketplace. Perhaps you heard of Romney are or ObamaCare? Same plan.

And about death panels? Initially it is a discussion of rationing a limited resource. But the death panels we have now are purely based upon greed of the insurance companies. Delay, Deny, Defend. That depose wasn't so much a bad idea, if we look at human suffering/death as a loss of GDP.

These deaths due to delaying and denying are capitalist deaths.

> Maybe you feel that a pill that costs a few bucks to produce should be sold for that same price. In that case I'd like to remind you that in this case, a private company spent BILLIONS on medical research, without knowing if any of it would ever pay off. If you just take their one succesful product and distribute it for free, they won't bother trying again.

First, most new drugs come out of the public higher education in the form of studies and papers. And Reagan changed the rules allowing universities to make bank on the backs of students.

Since they were publicly funded, they should be owned by the public.

But they're not. The rights get bought by a monopoly maker, who gets nearly 2 decades of protection. Who cares if those drugs could save 5 million per year if reasonably priced. Monopoly control gets monopoly pricing.

Now specifically Solvaldi.. It costs $1000 a pill, once a day for 12 weeks. $84k. Insurance won't pay for this cure, since treatments are cheaper. However it costs $300 to manufacture with chemical supplies. We could save 5 million people a year here, with easy and cheap access to cures. We, as a society, do not value life. We value 'how much I can extract from your life'.

Four Thieves Vinegar Collective talks about this on their videos https://kolektiva.media/w/6iqzQtGqGSKbeFndBkEcm7

> How many great medicins came out of communist countries?

Playing GOTCHA games with 'name something or you're invalid' is boring, and only shows not knowing some name on demand. And that's also being completely ignorant of the propaganda here in the USA.

But one wide area the USSR invested in is macrophage research, as a whole class of drugs. And that's not 1 drug, but a whole class.

But seriously, how many needless deaths are caused by capitalism? And yes, I'm looking at: lack of housing (homelessness), overpriced medicine, overpriced doctors, hyperprocessed and/or food that would not be legal elsewhere, terrible products that create obscene trash, extreme consumerism leading to unmitigated climate devastation.

But hey, a billionaire got another 10 million in the time it took to write my post.