Medical Care Discussion

depending on how long the child would have survived without it. yeah, I know, what price do you put on a child's life.

but considering the median wage in the US is under $50,000 a year, that means 20 years of one parent's ENTIRE income before taxes to pay it off. and what are you going to do - say no and let your child die? I'm not sure which is more cruel - not having the cure, or not being able to refuse it.

by which you mean begging.

no, for most americans, there is no variant of paying out of their own resources, on the table.

that is a charitable organization, not the customer's own resources.

interestingly, it is on the news this morning - the actual list price is $475,000.00, and you only pay if it works.

their next step is they think it can be adapted to be effective on other ailments.

the mechanics of it is that it is a genetic therapy that reprograms your immune system to attack the targeted cells - in the current case, the leukemia cells. of course, the patient must be monitored, during the treatment, because breaking down and eliminating the resultant dead cells causes its own medical trouble.

now if we could just make some breakthroughs in the concept of life saving medicine being a part of the right to life.

TANSTAAFL.

There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

A rather brilliant niece of a friend of mine just got her degree in biological engineering. She works in this field, engineering to make the next miracle drug via CRISPR and other methods.

Quite frankly, she may work her entire career and never produce a useful product, except in the case of "Okay, now we know that doesn't work".

That's the way science works. You come up with a hypothesis, and often disprove it.

Someone's got to pay for her time spent in the lab, along with the thousands of other folks in her company. In short, she has to eat, too.

When you pay for a treatment, you're paying for the ones that failed as well as the success.

And a success usually leads to more success, so the million dollar treatment of today will be optimized to be the half million treatment of tomorrow, and (with time and hope) the OTC version in the future (if you're lucky).

Customizing genetic medicine to individuals is definitely a breakthrough in medical science, and a field in it's infancy. Give it time.

Think of the difference as being buying a bare bones Kia off the lot vs. having Rolls Royce hand build you a custom car. That's why the price will be high.

However, the technology used in the Rolls usually trickles down to the Kia, eventually.

Erm, yeah, but?...

Me and a few "mates" went a racing at a race track, and we drove cars that had "Air-bags" in them.
Yeah, we had 5point full harness with that head restraint thing HARMS, but the cars were fitted with Air Bags...
You can date this escapade by checking out when Airbags trickled down from "Expensive" cars to the type available for Track racing.

They were not actually in the cars we were racing, "For safety reasons", as it is accepted that touring car racing is a contact sport, but the cars brand new would have had them fitted.


Unfortunately, I can point at many thousands of deaths from cars that did not have modern safety equipment like airbags, Side Impact Protection, suitable roll cages.....
Take a rolls and a Mk1 dodge challenger and set them at 40mph into a brick wall.
Buster will tell you who will walk away and who will need several hours of expensive A&E care to keep them alive?.

This isnt just about Rolls, its about all cars.
My current car is NCap 5 star....
The "Smart" car barely scrapes a 3.
The difference is at 60mph, I will walk, the "smart" may kill.
The more expensive the car, the better your chance is at survivability....
And, ALL of this, is related to me and my mates going racing on a track and looking at the type of impacts that survive a season on a race track.... the technology is developed there and "Trickles down" to road cars.

At 140mph, up to 200mph, I know Lewis Hamilton will walk away from many impacts in his F1 car.... most cars I pass on the road today will crumple-apse-wreck into a ball of recycling in a similar impact, but how many millions to rebuild an F1 car?. what is it about 5 million a shot for a complete rebuild?. and thats just the parts, the mechanics time is extra.

And of the cars I pass today, MOST of them, the ones that are "real" cars and not just glorified mobility scooters that can barely get to motorway speeds on eco-boost 3cylinder sub 1 litre engines, will happily cruise at 135 to 155 mph, some of them a lot more.

How many of them are "Survivable" at over 100mph?..

....and this is why I barely EVER exceed 90mph on a motorway unless I am trying to get the hell away from ijurts playing bumper tag and trying to get off at the next exit to GTF outa there.

[note on above, I watch the rear view as much as I watch ahead, because most incidents I have escaped from, happened "Behind" me?..]

If the alternative is to not save his life because you can't afford to develop the treatment in the first place, then yes, it is.

Ask any parent who has had to bury a child. Given the choice between a healthy bank balance and a healthy child...to any caring parent, the choice is obvious. If you get any other answer, then there is something wrong with them.

Love often means sacrifice. Money is just...money.

And ignoring the effect of charities that do provide medical assistance denies the obvious truth that they are part of the way the medical system works. And better yet, you are certain that their payments for treatment are voluntary on all sides.

Just because you need something to live doesn't mean it must be free. You need food to live, but you don't assume a farmer should provide it for free. Over the course of your life, I wouldn't be surprised if you spend hundreds of thousands on food.

$26,000 a year to keep mrs TLW alive for the 5 years it took to get her qualified (read: to endure the freezeout process) for disability.

in those years I was grossing close to a hundred thousand a year - and the worst year, my net income was $1,000.00.

my combined income and self employment tax for that year? $3,000.00.

I really SHOULD have filed bankruptcy, but it would probably have involved losing my business and my Jeep, and I know I would never be in a position to replace them.

fortunately, I had the good judgement to be born to the right parents, but there is a question of whether I will ever be able to repay them.

and keep in mind, I had insurance.