Insurance/Pharmaceutical Companies Make Profit on Sickness and Misery

[TheAllotrope]

This is an excerpt from a magazine I write for, addressing the claim that medical providers are evil for "acting like a business" and "making profits off sickness". I think it gives a nice, brief riposte to the "reformers".

Common understanding has it that doctors, insurers, and pharmaceutical companies make “excessive profits”, and “money off other people's misfortune, misery, and sickness”. These claims are totally unjustified. “Making money off people's misery” implies that medical care is making people sick, when they are in fact improving people's health. This claim is the logical equivalent of a farmer “making a profit off someone's hunger” or an architect “making a profit off someone's homelessness”. The fact is that all of these people are giving us longer, happier, and more fulfilling lives. Fundamentally, profits indicate value added, the contribution made to human life. A person who makes no profits would be producing wealth and consuming it at the same rate; not only would his standard of living stagnate, he would lose permanently his time and effort. The truth is that human beings cannot exist without profiting on their capital and labor. As George Will stated on This Week regarding pharmaceutical companies making profits, “Good! They should be!”

[SapereAude]

Would you mind posting a link to the original article?

[TheAllotrope]

The magazine is UC Berkeley's California Patriot. Because the writers are all students and do not necessarily subscribe to any particular philosophy it can be somewhat hit-or-miss. This article hasn't been published yet, so the only copy of this is on my computer. Once the article gets published I'll try to get a link up for the online version.

[BRG253]

To be fair, the pharmaceutical industry has been about as abusive of government, and probably more abusive of science than any other industry that has existed in recent history. They large pharma corporations have been unduly influencing the prescribing habits of doctors for decades. They have fostered rampant conflicts of interest in academia and an extremely dangerous entanglement of government and industry with the FDA. They manipulate research, distort medical knowledge, and obstruct competition from natural products by illicit means. The situation is about as anti-capitalist as it is possible to get. It is a mistake to assume that drug companies are virtuous just because they fall into the category of big business. I'm not saying there is anything intrinsically wrong with a big drug company, but, in the current intellectual environment, things have simply gone to hell.

Edited October 30, 2009 by BRG253

[TheAllotrope]

How is it possible for a pharmaceutical company to abuse government? Who ultimately holds the power in that situation? The abuse might be toward consumers, facilitated by government and using taxpayer money, but that's a very different argument.

[CWEarl]

This is an excerpt from a magazine I write for, addressing the claim that medical providers are evil for "acting like a business" and "making profits off sickness".

Right. And automobile manufacturers make profits off a lack of transportation. Food producers make profits off hunger. Producers of clothing make profits off of nudity. Home builders make money off homelessness.

[TheEgoist]

What would you rather doctors and pharmacy companies make money on?