Another example of how the medical field mindset is stuck on capitalism to its own peril

Medium article about metformin as an anti aging drug

I highlighted the following passage from the article and then commented on it below the quote

Once metformin has the official labeling language to back up scientists’ anti-aging claims for the drug, the theory goes, pharmaceutical companies will be inspired to invest in more daring ventures — and then the truly miraculous drugs, the ones that could have us living healthily to 115 and beyond, might begin to flow through the pipeline.

The following is my response to the above quote from the article:

by Glen Wallace

 This mindset of looking to pharmaceutical companies to bring us our cures and treatments still depends on the capitalist market to get a medicine to patients. Time and again I see the research community struggling to find ways to get a promising drug or medical device to the market just so the product can get to the patient that needs the product. I like to call it the Rube Goldberg method of healthcare delivery. The clear solution is to cut out the capitalist middle man and socialize medicine from initial research to manufacture and distribution to patients. The federal government and other public entities has the ability to research, manufacture & distribute medicines and medical devices at cost or no cost to the patients according to their need. Clearly there is a need for an anti aging medicine for all the associated maladies of old age, therefore the government should respond by first engaging in researching such medicine, then manufacturing and distributing the medicine that has been shown safe and effective for the condition. No need to woo, beg or plead drug companies into researching & developing such drugs. If the public has a need then the public should exercise its prerogative to satisfy that need through their own government.

Capitalism is failing medical field -- Need to nationalize or make public medicine

The following is my comment in response to above video:

By Glen Wallace

It wouldn't have to be a public company. I often compare the idea of public manufacture and distribution of pharmaceuticals to the longstanding US Government Printing Office, AKA Government Publishing Office, that for many decades has manufactured and sold printed materials from pamphlets to books and sells those materials to the public. So we could potentially open a US Government Pharmaceuticals & Medical Devices Office that researches, develops, manufactures and distributes meds and medical devices at cost or no cost to patients according to need. But yes, regardless of what it is called, we need a public pharma that is patient need based instead of the current Big Pharma medical system that is market profit based. The current US medical system relies on the unsafe assumption that what is good for the corporation is also going to be good for the patient and the general public. We need only look at the price gouging with insulin to prove wrong that assumption of a symbiotic relationship between capitalism and good medicine. Insulin prices show there is often an antagonistic relationship between capitalism and good medicine. And yet most of the medical field mindset is in the monkey trap that traps the monkey by putting a sweet nut inside a cage, monkey puts its hand into a small hole to grab the nut but finds it can't get its hand out while its hand is clenched on the nut and is thus trapped by the cage tethered to the ground because it doesn't occur to the monkey to just let go of the nut. Similarly it doesn't occur to the vast majority of the members of the U.S. medical field and the politicians governing the field to just let go of the nut requiring meds and medical devices only be delivered by way of the capitalist market -- they remain fixated on the idea that they must have med products go through this Rube Goldberg device of capitalism first before the products can possibly get to the patients. And a public pharma shouldn't have to limit itself to just generic drugs. Laws could be passed exempting the public sector from patent restrictions for meds and medical devices. Any complaint that such an exemption would disincentivise research & development with private pharma, could be countered by nationalizing the research & development of medicine and medical devices also. Most of the scientists go into the field with the goal of finding cures and helping people anyways; making their research part of the public sphere would just give them the resources to find those cures along with allowing them to better direct the research according to public need instead of current private for-profit research that is directed by the corporate bean counters that will veto any research if it doesn't have good promise of big profits regardless of how much promise the research may have at finding a cure.