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Comment by WillPostForFood | Hacker News Reader

Great news! I wonder how much industry resistance there will be. Treating MS patients is a massive industry. Drug treatments are $100k a year currently, replacing that with a single $20 vaccine would be disruptive in the best way.

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Avonex is off patent - still profitable, but drug companies are not entirely insensitive to being displaced by breakthroughs.

Wouldn't insurance companies love a lower cost one time treatment?

I'm sure they would, but bear in mind that the costs are likely going to be much higher for an MS vaccine than for nCov2, due to the economies of scale that the latter has. Insurance companies will still probably love a one-time $20,000 (or whatever number they can justify) treatment compared to ongoing costs.

Doubtful. Insurances dont run at a loss, every penny that goes into them they take a cut as profits. If the treatment is expensive, great! More demand for their product, and even if their cut is the same, their profit and revenue will be greater.

So why do they push for generic options instead of the newest and greatest drugs.

This doesn't make sense to me. Insurance in a collective risk pooling scheme. How do they take a cut when they are the ones paying out?

There's an 80/20 rule in the ACA [0] where at least 80 percent of the premiums paid must be spent on healthcare costs, otherwise the difference between 80 percent and the actual amount paid must be returned.

Sounds great, until the insurance companies figured out that the best way to make more profit with this profit cap is to pay out more and increase the premiums accordingly. [1] Obviously, the hospitals don't mind that either.

[0] https://www.healthcare.gov/health-care-law-protections/rate-...

[1] https://www.aeaweb.org/research/regulating-health-insurers-a...

Given that it doesn't suppress the immune system as much as existing treatments, other parties will likely tell them to go away (patients, doctors, insurance, etc.).

Where does it say it'd be only $20 ?

Indeed. It most certainly won’t be $20. If it permanently “cured” someone of MS they could charge hundreds of thousands and insurance companies would gladly pay it.

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