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Comment by tfourb | Hacker News Reader

I think the difference is the extend of the profit. Big Pharma is incredibly profitable, while grocery stores are operating on very thin margins. Few people have a problem with a company doing business based on government expenditure, but specializing in maximizing profit from this reeks of profiteering.

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Just as a point of reference, if you bought 100K in Pfizer stock 25 years ago, it would now be worth about 100K. Adjusted for inflation, you would have lost about 50% of it’s value.

Not what I would call ‘incredibly profitable’. And they are one of the biggest.

Stock price and profits are not the same thing. The stock price are a bet on future developments, mostly on revenue/profit growth. Profits are actual money in the bank.

Pfizer's annual net income has been around $10 Billion continually since 2009: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/PFE/pfizer/gross-p...

Annual revenues for that period were mostly between $45 and $60 Billion.

Not sure about you, but that is what I'd call "incredible profitable" on any day of the week.

Pfizer is one of the largest drug makers in the world, and an annual net income of $10B puts them well behind many tech companies (Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Nvidia, Meta, Google, TCMC), carmakers (Toyota, BMW, Volkswagen, and Mercedes-Benz), retailers (Walmart and Home Depot), fashion brands (Dior), telco companies (Verizon), banks (Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, UBS), financial services companies (Visa), insurers (United Health), shipping companies (Maersk), and basically every gas and oil company on the planet. I think you would be hard pressed to identify a single one of these companies who hasn’t benefited from tax payer funded government research and initiatives.

So what exactly makes it so perniciously awful for pharmaceutical companies to do so?

Because my life doesn't depend on if I can buy the next iPhone, but it very well might depend on if I can afford a certain drug.

Apart from that I personally think that excessive profit is reprehensible for any type of business, as someone, somewhere is the sucker on the other end of that equation. Tremendous profits usually come with someone being exploited somewhere along the value chain. For many of the businesses that you have listed this is painfully obvious for anyone who is willing to think about this for even a minute.

Does that include the value of dividends paid over the period?

with dividends, you might just about broke even on your 25 year investment.

If the goal is to go after 'extremely profitable' companies, maybe we should be looking at tech companies, that are in fact, 'extremely profitable', unlike most pharma companies.

and for the record, I have zero love for pharma companies, or how they operate - but they are not - in general - 'extremely profitable' companies. Far from it.

I agree with your position. There is a trend on HN and other platforms that anything with a profit motive is bad. Capitalism is bad, profits are bad... Yet it is all complaining on the problems without a actual real solution.

I thought HN was better, focus on the actual problems and not let every discussion turn into a profit/capitalism = bad debate.

The "actual real solution" with the regard to the topic in this thread is demonstrated well by a number of countries around the globe: force everyone in a country to be part of a public health insurance system, financed mostly by deductions on income and tightly regulate price setting for drugs and medical services administered under that system.

If that sounds too much like socialism for your taste, give rich people the option to buy additional services or restrict the public system to basic medical services and drugs and require private insurance on top for cutting-edge stuff.

Profit is a great thing, but it is not an end to itself. The point of liberal democratic societies is to guarantee basic rights for everyone, while constantly improving the welfare (which is not the same as wealth) of as many people as possible. Capitalism has made great contributions towards that goal, but it also contradicts it in several critical places and thus needs to be regulated where necessary.

>tightly regulate price setting for drugs and medical services administered under that system.

One think I think worth mentioning is that there is a significant difference between price controls and purchasing controls. purchasing controls is simply refusing to buy if the price is too high, while price controls is mandating a miniumum or maximum price for X. nearly every successful medical system uses purchasing controls, not price controls.

IMO, one of the main reasons costs are out of control is a lack of purchasing controls.

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