Loans will lead the way to longer life!
"Could financing health care like a home hold down drug costs?" by Ed Silverman @Pharmalot, March 8, 2016
Consumers take out loans every day to purchase houses, cars, and college tuition. What if they could do the same for expensive medicines?
It’s an idea that a group of Boston-area health economists floated last month in response to the rising cost of prescription drugs. And as envisioned, everyone involved in health care and finance could benefit from the availability of a health care loan.
That's $ick!
Patients would gain access to needed medicines. Drug makers would gain more confidence their treatments would find a market and generate more revenue that could be invested in research. And by bundling the loans and then reselling them — a financial maneuver known as securitization — banks could create a market to attract and reward investors.
Yes, lets find another avenue to create a bailout bubble that caused the crash of 2008!
“There’s a win-win, but the most important thing is that we would be saving lives,” said Andrew Lo, a health economist at the MIT Sloan School of Management, who proposed the idea of health care loans in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
Yeap!!
Lo and his colleagues suggest lenders could earn 9 percent on nine-year loans and investors could earn a hypothetical 12 percent annual return from a loan fund. And as a further enticement to consumers, they propose a pay-for-performance mechanism in which a loan could be cancelled if a treatment fails to work and an illness returns before final payments are due.
I wonder how many derivatives can be sold on your life?
As long as I have been doing this, and I'm still astonished at the absolute arrogance of the ruling cla$$es and their mouthpiece pre$$.
The notion is appealing.
I'll bet it is!
After all, making it possible for patients to obtain expensive life-saving medicines could go a long way toward tackling the mushrooming problem of rising drug costs — an issue that’s likely to become even more vexing as pricey personalized medicines become available.
Why would it tackle costs?
If anything, it would seem like it is going to add to them, what with all the debt interest incurred!!
And what is this about pricy genetic treatments?
Can you REALLY TRUST the MEDICAL E$TABLI$HMENT in AmeriKa anymore?
But before anyone signs on the bottom line, consider the fine print.
Now I'm predisposed to not sign, sorry.
Not every illness is so easily vanquished. This underscores the challenges lenders may face as they evaluate the credit risk of sick consumers.
I thought I was a patient.
Now we are going to have Wall Street ratings agency representatives showing up at doctor's offices and visits?
Is that where this is headed, because.... isn't all that medical information supposed to be private?
Oh, right, applying for a loan.
Here’s another concern: If health care loans are guaranteed by the federal government the way that student loans are, the pharmaceutical industry may not feel constrained about pricing.
Nope.
NOT A GOOD IDEA!
This WHOLE THING $TINKS!
And with more people borrowing money to obtain and pay for more treatments, health care costs could soar when the loan system is intended to do the opposite.
I'm sorry, say again, because earlier I saw.... never f***ing mind, pos.
As Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a left-leaning Washington think tank, pointed out, the loans “may give drug makers incentive to do exactly what we don’t want them to do. And there’s nothing to stop them from trying” to raise prices.
You know, the Globe really makes you think sometimes!
Others worry that securitization is problematic, because this is the same mortgage-bundling technique that led to the Great Recession.
Oh, I'm $orry, what was that again?
“I’m not sure these loans would prevent us from more bankruptcies any more than easy mortgages prevented us from disaster in the housing market,” said Arthur Caplan, a bioethicist at the New York University School of Medicine.
Where TF is Dodd-Frank?
Lo acknowledged the proposal is only a starting point, and he said he hopes the idea can gain enough traction to eventually convince insurers and government agencies to take on the loans.
Already, some on Wall Street seem open to the notion.
That ought to stop the idea in its tracks on precedent alone!!!
“I think it is worth exploring,” said Tom Rutledge, who heads the fixed income group at the Magnetar Capital hedge fund. “The question is how do we make it transparent for everybody involved, and make it a fair market for both borrowers and lenders?”
Indeed, more work is needed in order to create a dedicated loan market and overcome legitimate skepticism about mortgaging patient lives. This is a distasteful notion, but perhaps it will spur policymakers into addressing drug costs.
I'm sorry, what was that you said?
I don't know if I CAN GET OVER THAT!
If for no other reason than that, Lo and his colleagues deserve credit for putting the issue on the table.
OMG!
That gives you an insight into how the ruling cla$$ views you, citizen.
--more--"
So WHEN is HE TAKING on HIS LIFE?
Hope he's first in line!
Ever notice loans (thus debt) are the answer to everything when it comes to the pre$$?
UPDATE:
The more I think about this story the more $ickening the ruling cla$$ becomes.
They want to "bundle" our illne$$es together as they preach good health care to us -- when us being sick is the market, and the more the merrier!
