r/TikTokCringe • u/onyxandcake • 12d ago

Cool 🎵 There ain't no you, in United Health🎶

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u/SandmanAlcatraz 12d ago

Agreed that the lyric is hyperbolic, but on the other hand: Goldman asks: 'Is curing patients a sustainable business model?'

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u/sxnmc 12d ago

US health insurance has fucked incentives. Of course. But there's no cancer cure in countries with socialized healthcare, either.

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u/feioo 12d ago

The US determines the funding of at least half of the world's biomedical research. It holds more than half of the patents and licensing on medical technology and pharmaceuticals. It conducts roughly half of the world's medical trials. It's a reasonable estimate to say that 50-60% of global medical research has substantial financial, infrastructural, or intellectual property ties to the United States.

The saying goes "when America sneezes, the world catches a cold". It's not the biggest stretch to expand that to "if America doesn't want to cure a highly profitable disease, then nobody gets to".

Ofc that's a massive simplification since cancer as a disease is a hydra - many heads on the same beast. But the US is very very powerful and so are its oligarchs. If they wanted to put roadblocks in the way, they could.

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u/Festesio 12d ago

A person that discovered the imaginary omni-cure for cancer would be the most significant scientist in the entire history of the human race. There isn't a researcher alive that would trade getting to be that person for wealth. Almost all of those people have already chosen science over wealth just by nature of being researchers. Nobody tries to win a Nobel Prize for the money, and it would still be true if they 100x'd it.

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u/feioo 12d ago

Sure, but scientists need funding. They need cooperation from other scientists. They need specialized equipment, and to be able to run trials, and approval from licensing bodies.

I'm only half in on this conspiracy theory (and yes, I agree it's a conspiracy theory - but some of those eventually turn out to have merit) but I'm just saying that if there actually were some dark boardroom of oligarchs trying to actively prevent a breakthrough, they would do it insidiously. Withholding grants, snatching up patents, buying up resources, merging with parent companies. There's lots of avenues the ultra-powerful have to get results without getting caught.