>People should be willing to pay as much for it as the alternative
Maybe. But maybe there's also something wrong with expecting that much. Somehow Sidney Farber didn't decide that he was going to charge the families of kids with ALL the actuarial value of the remainder of their lives.
It can be frustrating to see the public, out of ignorance, grossly misjudge the relative contributions to health of, say, a vaccine developer relative to a self-promoting surgeon. But there is something new and rather strange with this way of seeing medicine as a "capture the value"-type enterprise.
Maybe. But maybe there's also something wrong with expecting that much. Somehow Sidney Farber didn't decide that he was going to charge the families of kids with ALL the actuarial value of the remainder of their lives.
It can be frustrating to see the public, out of ignorance, grossly misjudge the relative contributions to health of, say, a vaccine developer relative to a self-promoting surgeon. But there is something new and rather strange with this way of seeing medicine as a "capture the value"-type enterprise.