THE DEFINITIVE ARGUMENTS AGAINST FOR-PROFIT HEALTHCARE ARE LOGICAL, MATHEMATICAL AND HISTORICAL

by Silviu Costinescu

The best doctor is the one that prescribes the least medicine

popular wisdom

Where does that come from and what does it mean for health-related businesses?

Actual old Nye post

Before admitting pharmaceuticals and medical treatments for quality assessment, before assessing manufacturers’ expertise, before giving them any attention at all, first and foremost we have to consider that:

Sheep don’t benefit wolf’s expertise.
Same for sheeple and their predators.

So we have to make sure we’re from the same side of the fence. If I am to be a sheep, I can only count on sheep support.
The best way to clear that out is by looking at two things:

  1. Incentives
  2. History

You don’t judge Mafia by Mafia laws, only mobsters do that.
Same for Pharmafia.


1. Incentives

“Freakonomics”, a global best-selling book which shaped a generation, has dedicated a solid chapter to experts and their incentives, which obviously dictate how the expertise is used.

An incentive is a bullet, a key: an often tiny object with astonishing power to change a situation

Steven D. Levitt, “Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything”

In “for-profit healthcare”, the main incentive is in the name.
For-profit”.
What drives profit up? Diseases.
What drives profit down? Health.

Disease is demand for health, the demand needs to be maintained above the offer, insatiable. Selling health lowers the demand, cures kill it.
Imagine if Coca-Cola cured thirst for good, instead of boosting it and being addictive. There would be no Coca-Cola today.
So selling health and cures is a cannibalistic unsustainable business model.
As admitted by Goldman-Sachs experts in a letter to a bio-tech client:

The potential to deliver ‘one shot cures’ is one of the most attractive aspects of gene therapy, genetically-engineered cell therapy and gene editing. However, such treatments offer a very different outlook with regard to recurring revenue versus chronic therapies… While this proposition carries tremendous value for patients and society, it could represent a challenge for genome medicine developers looking for sustained cash flow.

Goldman-Sachs analyst Salveen Richter cited by CNBC
Drug-addicted mainstream-media tried to spin it and inject doubt. As you can see from the actual quote, the analyst didn’t ask a thing, he stated.

For as long as humanity has been mentally functional and intelligence has been a successful adaptation tool, common sense (seen as natural logic based on personal and peer experience) used to determine our actions. Common sense guided our species’ survival just until corporate education and propaganda took over our minds.
Common sense helped us realize that the better the healer, the less you need to see him.

As opposed to most other businesses and occupations, healthcare has a particularity: Its success kills its demand.
The better the medicine, the less you need to take it.
The perfect medicine would end the need for medicine.

SELLING HEALTH IS COMMERCIAL SUICIDE

So what’s a businessman supposed to do in the commercial-suicide business?

“If they’re selling glass and the business is slow, they grab some bricks and break some windows”

Popular wisdom

Which, in medical business terms, translates as:

YOU CAN PROFIT SELLING HEALTH ONLY IF YOU SPREAD MORE DISEASE THAN HEALTH

There’s no other way to maintain a “health-care” business.

The biggest profit is always in returning customers, which, for a health-care business, identify as people with real or imaginary diseases who can live with them (and spread them, preferably) so they can buy products and services for long enough.
The diseased and the hypochondriacs are the market. The market needs perpetually expanded.
Of course, if a disease is killing the customers too quickly, you can jack up some prices so you can milk same money or more in a shorter time span. Or life span. See the cancer industry.
Better health makes customers return less, unless it’s on subscription.
And “a patient cured is a customer lost”.

So spread a bit of health for public image and marketing purposes, spread as much illness and fear as you possibly can without fully destroying your market, and you’re set for an unlimited cash-flow. Worked every time.
Success depends only on how you balance the health and the disease you put out.
Bonus: this way you also get to control population development, which is a very marketable service too.

The fear created by commercial experts may not quite rival the fear created by terrorists like the Ku Klux Klan, but the principle is the same.

– Steven D. Levitt, “Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything”

This business model has been already successfully implemented by every ideology ever. Ideologists sell fear of fictitious dangers and suffering, usually from an imaginary future, demanding actual present tangible benefits as protection tax.
The climate industry is booming on the same principles.
This sort of mental racketeering is actually the core of our society, it fuels politics, business, religion, and even science.

And that puts the healthcare customer on the other side of the fence from the healthcare business.

In healthcare business, the customer and the seller are in a conflict of interests


2. History

An expert with good intentions and good methods should have a history to vouch for him.
According to the officially registered and reported history, every Pharma giant is a felon with multiple convictions for false, fraud, bribery, and other forms of deceit and corruption. Don’t believe what I say, research what I say, just look up whatever your favorite sources are, they all reported the crimes, “the truth is not hidden, people are hiding from it”.

That’s all there is to this chapter, and below is what common-sense should’ve already dictated (and what made my most successful meme to date):

There is no long-term profit in selling health and
taking health advice from disease-profiteers is a suicidal policy.

They employ experts capable to make you their returning customer, aka perennial patient. The better they get at it, the sicker you get.

The original classic by yours truly

Thus we have shown that
the race for profit turns healthcare businesses into expert predators, not helpers.
I chose not to become their pray.
You?

</debate>

To be continued?
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! Articles can always be subject of later editing as a way of perfecting them