>> No one on earth should be KEPT FROM SAVING SOMEONE ELSE'S LIFE. That always trumps any endeavor to make a company or ultimately a single person richer.
It's not about richness, it's about resource allocation. What you're describing is idealistic but not at all applicable in real life.
There are always situations and treatments that might prolong a person's life with X% for Y USD. What if X=0.01%, Y=500'000 USD (i.e. some highly advanced chemo sessions), and the person is 100 years old? What if you could fund with the same 500'000 USD a study that has a 10% probability to improve the cure rate of the treatment by 10%? You need to establish some boundaries and to allocate the resources according to those thresholds; leaving aside the emotionality of those decisions, at the end of the day the society needs to decide how it splits 1 billion in building new bridges, doing medical research or applying existing solutions to marginal patients. It doesn't matter if the government or the free market makes those decisions, but saying "no one" is unrealistic.
In your example the treatment simply becomes too expensive with a slim chance of success.
The relevant situation is one where a treatment is readily available (no assumptions about cost are being made) but covered by a patent, thus keeping the doc from using it because someone legally (= on paper) keeps the doc from using the treatment method.
And yes, patents are about money and property rights and richness. Not about treatment cost.
It's not about richness, it's about resource allocation. What you're describing is idealistic but not at all applicable in real life.
There are always situations and treatments that might prolong a person's life with X% for Y USD. What if X=0.01%, Y=500'000 USD (i.e. some highly advanced chemo sessions), and the person is 100 years old? What if you could fund with the same 500'000 USD a study that has a 10% probability to improve the cure rate of the treatment by 10%? You need to establish some boundaries and to allocate the resources according to those thresholds; leaving aside the emotionality of those decisions, at the end of the day the society needs to decide how it splits 1 billion in building new bridges, doing medical research or applying existing solutions to marginal patients. It doesn't matter if the government or the free market makes those decisions, but saying "no one" is unrealistic.