#healthcare-economics

#healthcare-economics

Antibiotic development is long and expensive, yet antibiotics are used for short durations and sold at relatively low prices. Newly developed antibiotics are often also reserved for use as a last resort, to protect the drugs' efficacy. This combination of factors makes it difficult for a company to recoup their investment, and has led to an exodus of organizations and scientific talent from antibiotic research and development. The pipeline of drugs has been reduced to a trickle, and deaths resulting from antibiotic resistance are increasing.

Geoffrey Hinton, the Nobel Prize winning computer scientist who is often referred to as the "Godfather of AI", famously asserted in 2016 that, "People should stop training radiologists now. It's just completely obvious that in five years deep learning is going to do better than radiologists." The logical expectation would be that the number of radiologists should begin to decline over time as they begin to get replaced by AI.

A doctors strike would further diminish the ability of the NHS to deliver, and play into the hands of those who don't believe in an NHS publicly funded.