Facebook post by Goh Meng Seng

Medical Capitalism

Medicine is a social good and it has been serving different human civilizations for centuries in different forms and traditions.

In traditional medicine, the two biggest civilizations, India and China have developed their own systems, Ayurveda and TCM respectively. 

When "Modern Medicine" came along with the progress in science and it projected a seemingly "more systematic and logical approach" towards medicine.

The Allopathic approach of Modern Medicine gives instant visible results and naturally have become the mainstream establishment.

However, in China, the government has combined both Modern and Traditional medicines in many of its established hospitals. 

Modern Medicine takes a quick development flight with the injection of huge capital in the Western world. In Capitalist Medicine, the contributions to humanity is undoubtedly great. 

However, when the nature of capitalism in maximizing profits set in, the direction of Big Pharma seems to be corrupted. 

There are many conspiracy stories going around throughout the last century on how Big Pharma have become the Big Bad Wolves, suppressing CURE while promoting Chronic. Dependency on their products.

There is no lack of scandals big and small which implicated the few Big Pharma in the world but it seems that no amount of fines or penalties could stop such scandals from repeating.

Morals should not be seen as contradictory to Capitalist Medicine but in the Ultra Capitalist system, profit maximization is the only guiding principle.

 It justifies its greed by rationalizing the need to fund many expensive researches and thus, the need to earn big money.

However such system will create huge moral hazards when the need to recover cost in development may lead to pressure to the focus   on creating demand on Chronic Dependency rather than full Cure. A Cure is actually a cessation of earning more profit while Chronic Dependency ensures long term profit generationtion.

On the other hand, any potential cure that cannot be patented will automatically be discarded.

Modern Medicine no longer serves primarily as social good but has turned into a capitalistic profiteering machinery.