I thoroughly agree with your grayed comment. It doesn't necessarily imply that it's all greed and evil, but there's enough of it to dignify your statement, without applying my own experience.
There's nothing preventing pharma companies from just charging the equivalent of a lifetime supply for a one-off treatment. In fact, this is how cancer treatments are priced at the same time being the single largest source of revenue for pharma:
I'm not directly arguing against this, but it seems to me that this would eliminate a large part of the 'survival market'. Incremental debt, paycheck to paycheck accounts for much of the population.
Personally, I'd rather explore Elysium than give the entirety of my already insufficient and all prospective funds to what I consider pharmaceutical pimps. Poverty in America is, in my experience, worse than much of the 3rd world, where the practice is often more salubrious, less stigmatized and better performed, depending on one's values.
My friend would have long been dead of hep-c had he remained in the US. Although the US is my home and I'll go nowhere else, he took advantage of his Aussie ancestry and obtained citizenship, relocated and was treated for free. Here it would have been at least 250,000.
On the subject of cancer treatment, notably in the US, I'll not argue the subject, but will directly offer my perspective, which views it as highly exploitative and financially motivated. One example is the absurd reluctance to embrace or iin some cases, explore, the subject of enzymatic therapies and other 'foreign' procedures.
I'm an incorrigible cynic here and not worth trying to educate.
These companies are very much profit-driven and in terms of pricing as cold-hearted as they come.
It's just that if they could get your money now at once, they would do it. There's no scheme to keep you paying again and again - they're just not able to provide a different solution.
Meanwhile if a treatment isn't explored by them it's usually due to one of the following reasons:
-Not patentable.
-Not broadly applicable (e.g. only effective in people with specific, rare genes).
