The Brutal Insanity Of The Market

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RedHughs
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Sep 2 2009 06:10
The Brutal Insanity Of The Market

I was just reading this article about the development of cancer drugs (in the USA)

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/02/health/research/02cancerdrug.html

Here, a zinger worth noticing is...

Dr. Neal J. Meropol, an oncologist at the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia who has been studying drug prices. wrote:
“As long as the marketplace does not distinguish between modestly effective drugs and dramatically effective drugs, there won’t be an incentive to shift resources to a greater emphasis on a larger benefit,”

E.I. since a person (or their relatives) will pay a lot to stay alive just a bit longer, the market place directs drug company resources towards drugs that help people do only that, with the medical system boiling down to a despicable protection racket (sure, one that "helps" people).

Further, if you extend this and other insane misallocations of resources across the entire medical system, it's not hard to see how "health care" now takes 18% of the US GDP and growing, while still utterly failing millions of people. And, of course, since whatever reform is being discussed will only involve more bureaucracy combined with more efforts to commodify human health, we can only expect these efforts to make things worse.

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Sheldon
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Sep 3 2009 01:10

That's horrendous, and I wish I could say it was surprising. In Victorville, (southern) California, just a few months ago brand new homes were demolished because the bank which had acquired them could save more money with the homes gone than to continue development and sell them at a lower price.

Quote:
[A bank representative] said the city of Victorville fined the bank once because the homes are out of code and would have faced daily fines if Guaranty didn't do something with the vacant houses.

"There are still substantial dollars that need to be put into the land before the city of Victorville will give certificates of occupancy on the houses and the bank isn't willing to put forward that amount of money," Smith said.

He said the homes are a liability to Guaranty and that all of them are heavily vandalized inside and out with broken glass everywhere.

"Our projections are that those houses would sit the way they are for at least five years, what would they be worth then?" Smith said.

(http://www.vvdailypress.com/news/demolished-12162-homes-new.html)

This despite there being over 7000 homeless people in San Bernardino County alone. The market is incapable of functioning on a human need basis, despite what its apologists claim, and these sort of stories bear that truth out. Whether it be housing or health care, the market delineates towards the bottom line every time. Human beings are simply not part of the equation.