gonna sound like a anti-vaccine nut

[kimba1]

I notice a flaw in this vaccine situation that may of causes these outbreaks.  it`s cost. if vaccines are important why is the average cost pershot over $100 ? so anyone without insurance coverage will likely not get the shots plural. notice the demographic tend to be people with the least resources.

to be fair the other end of the spectrum is the affluent anti-vaccine folks that do have outbreaks. ex. marin county

[Plane]

  That is kinda interesting.


   I wonder if I can find an explanation of why vaccines cost what they do.


http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/03/health/Vaccine-Costs-Soaring-Paying-Till-It-Hurts.html?_r=0

https://www.vaccineshoppe.com/index.cfm?


Oh man!

This is gonna get worse!

[Xavier_Onassis]

I think greed is a major factor.

[Plane]

   Greed has always been a factor.

     The law has changed over the last twenty years , apparently enabling other factors, such as greed, greater control of the situation.

[Xavier_Onassis]

I think that the US and other countries should have government funded entities to research and develop vaccines.

Drug companies see vaccines as unprofitable. They would rather have drugs they sell constantly for specific conditions, taken as a maintenance routine.
They want to sell Viagra every time some old fart wants to get it up.
A pill or shot that would eliminate erectile dysfunction forever is NOT what they want to develop.
A pill that would kill cancer immediately instead of the radiation treatments and dozens of prescriptions for the side effects and the contraindications of the pills to fight the side effects is idea profit wise.

It is most beneficial to the public that  a few pills and shots that would prevent or cure a malady be developed, rather than medicine that simply eliminates the problem.

I think that the human race should band together to exterminate entirely disease carrying mosquitoes. They serve no positive purpose.

[Plane]

Vaccines used to be a lot cheaper.

The virus have changed little, it is the law that has made this difference.

[kimba1]

Vaccines cost $7 invthe 70s and  does not match what it cost today with inflation

[Xavier_Onassis]

Again. the government should develop, produce and sell these vaccines at cost.

[Plane]

Again. the government should develop, produce and sell these vaccines at cost.

If you want no new vaccines , this might be a good plan.

[BT]

Seems vaccine development follows universal steps, with a good bit of trial and error. I don't see why a public health organization couldn't spearhead the project. maybe a department of the CDC or NIH. Have the VA or college clinics handle the trials.

[Plane]

  Because that is not against the rules right now.

    There are dozens of government agency working on health problems , the CDC by itself has international impact.


      So to make the government solely the responsible party for vaccine development is only to shut down those companies that already do better than the government does.

     If the government can develop a vaccine or two , excellent, let them start already.

      But the government is not going to outcompete private interests that have a profit motive .


       There are certain things in which a profit motive is odious , in such matters the government is the proper responsible party. I don't expect contract soldiers or sailors to really replace patriotic ones for example.

       But where development of something new is the point of the exercise , the lack of profit motive is crippling to government efforts.


     Lets look at one of the great successes of NASA, landings on the Moon. This was a profit free great success.

      But the Moon remains unexploited five decades later.

       Do we want the science of medicine to proceed from useless success to useless success?

        The science of aviation was greatly pioneered in the USA and the Wright Brothers sold a few aircraft to the Army. The total escape from orthodoxy that flying provided made the invention useless to the thoroughly orthodox peacetime military.

       So aviation languished until sportsmen and other militaries developed it more, at the time that the US entered the fight in WWI we didn't have a suitable plane in production everyone had outrun our government dependent aircraft development.

      Most of the vaccines make most of their money in the US , they are also mostly developed in the US.

      What the government has been doing about this is to demand ten times the testing that they used to require , "improved " patent protections a bit too much, and mandated vaccinations regardless of cost.

       We really don't need the government to take over , rather we need more companies involved and a real competition between them.

[BT]

The way i look at it is the government determines the need for a vaccine and places a target cost per dose and puts it out to bid. And if the cdc or other government sponsored health organization wants to bid on the process so be it. The idea is universal access at an affordable cost. In some cases like Zika, maybe a vaccine is not the best approach. Maybe mosquito control measures might be more effective.

[sirs]

  Because that is not against the rules right now.

    There are dozens of government agency working on health problems , the CDC by itself has international impact.

      So to make the government solely the responsible party for vaccine development is only to shut down those companies that already do better than the government does.

     If the government can develop a vaccine or two , excellent, let them start already.

      But the government is not going to outcompete private interests that have a profit motive .

BINGO!!


     

[Plane]

The way i look at it is the government determines the need for a vaccine and places a target cost per dose and puts it out to bid. And if the cdc or other government sponsored health organization wants to bid on the process so be it. The idea is universal access at an affordable cost. In some cases like Zika, maybe a vaccine is not the best approach. Maybe mosquito control measures might be more effective.

    As an emergency measure this can happen just as you recommend , the government can subsidize the cost of research and guarantee a profit at a set point.

     In the short term there is a lot of possibility to do good this way , when the extra expense justifies it we can and have done this.


      In the long run , we do better without hobbling industry to government requirements, there is no potential for the government to have better foresight or more imagination than profit making companies.

        On the subject of mosquito abatement, DDT worked well forty years ago , but we have an international treaty that prevents it use , if some other agent is invented just as effective as DDT it is very liable to be just as ecologically a problem.

          DDT could be permitted and used to extinctify  mosquitos thus saving many human lives , how many bird species are we willing to do without to save perhaps millions of human lives?
   

[Xavier_Onassis]

      So to make the government solely the responsible party for vaccine development is only to shut down those companies that already do better than the government does.
I did not say that the government would be soley responsible, I said that the government should dedicate itself more to developing affordable vaccines.
'
Vaccines are rarely developed by private companies.

You assume that DDT is the only way to exterminate mosquitoes that is simply untrue.

The idea that the government cannot do anything right is false. Burt when Republicans run the government, they generally fuck it up by profiteering,and then it becomes more likely.