Does everyone have a right to the best medicine?

A friend recently asked me what I think about the following:

UN Human Rights  Council says everyone has the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.  Here are my thoughts:

As I wrote in my health care paper years ago, there are 3 different types of health care system which can work:

·         One-payer
·         Assured floor with rising tide that helps all ships
·         Libertarian

I favor the “rising tide” approach but people have the right to vote for any of those approaches.  Fortunately, there are some common principles which apply across all three types.  Unfortunately, those principles are not adhered to.

I don’t agree with the belief that everyone has a right to everything.  Essentially, this is the belief that everybody has the right to equal results, as opposed to equal opportunity. 

Health advances have occurred thanks to efforts in two sectors:

·         Government initiatives in terms of sanitation, requiring vaccination, etc.
·         Private enterprise – the medical advances discussed here fall into that sector.

The private sector advances have occurred because individuals have had incentive to take a variety of risks in order to pursue advancement.  Over time, all the advancements have reduced in cost, hence become available to a broader population.  Charitable organizations have contributed to spreading availability.

The risks are greater today than ever because:

·         Lawsuits make it scary to make many of these products available today.  Products have been pulled off the market.  Research is dulled also as a result.  This is a significant market access issue that the UN Human Rights Council seems to have ignored.

·         Government processes increase costs substantially and make returns more delayed and less certain.  This impacts price substantially.  Some of it (maybe a lot of it) is justified.  But there is also a restriction on human rights when a government forbids an individual from using a medicine that individual wants to use, as well as an impact on price and development.

·         Competition is much more severe in all aspects of business in the world today.  So you can get beaten to market or have a very short-lived product.

Nonetheless

1.    Profits might be too high in pharmaceuticals, but that is a huge topic that can’t be adequately addressed here.  I don’t like the short-term views of corporate management, in general.  Part of the short-term view is attributable to larger cities and more distant competition.  Businesses no longer have the same relationship with their local communities.  I’m not sure how to change this.  It is partly cultural.  However, encouraging more entrants generally leads to more competitive pricing. New technology in dealing with RNA and DNA enables gene-splicing very inexpensively, which lowers barriers and costs, helping to develop new medicines and reducing cost.  We need to encourage such competition, not discourage it.

2.    Certainly there is an opportunity to provide better health services worldwide.  For example, I love generics, but the inventor must be protected for an appropriate amount of time.

The UN Human Rights Council proposes to “delink medical research and development from the prices of medicines, diagnostics and vaccines”.  The article gave no indication of how they propose to do so.