Scientists have invented a pill - ( or wizards have invented a spell - whatever makes it believable for you ) - that can be given to any living person that will guarantee that person’s life and health for exactly one year.
You can give it to a person on the brink of death from injury or disease and within minutes they’ll be dancing a jig.
You could give it to a person suffering from any chronic condition, diabetes, cancer, depression, obesity, anything, and this person would be back to normal - for at least a year.
You could even give it to a healthy person and this person would be invicilble to disease or injury for 365 days.
As the period of year ends the person is left in a state of perfect health and is then left to the slings and arrows of entropy, the environment and their own stupidity - unless they take another pill at that time guaranteeing another year of carefree life.
The rub? - Each treatment costs one million U.S. dollars.
How would this marvelous medical breakthrough best be deployed? Should everyone get one? If so, who’d pay for it? Give it only to the very sick? Only to the very rich? To the winners of a lottery? To the winners of a contest? Guaranteed to those with worthy talents? To those that “deserve” it?
There have been many related questions similar to this except ‘immortality’ is invented.
It is very expensive.
In many of the stories, society collapses because the ‘have nots’ cannot tolerate the ‘haves’ having riches and immortality also. When everyone died, it was tolerable but to having to die while someone else gets to live because the have money created extreme ill will. This seems logical to me but do not know what would happen.
I think this is the same question philosophically as the OP but more extreme.
Who set the price? - Hypothecus, the god of hypothetical universes?
That’s not the price - it’s the cost. The hypothetical company that makes the drug has agreed to provide the pills at cost for the good of all humankind. They’ve made the formula free to everyone do that anyone can manufacture it, but they can’t make it any more cheaply. - It’s just a really, really difficult thing to make.
Libertarian - You sure are taking this seriously for a hypothetical situation.
I’ll read the book that you’ve pointed me to when I get a chance - 930 pages! - Whew! Maybe you could provide a precis.
The price is set by the hypotetical Happy Pill Company Inc. Their board of directors decided that this was so important a breakthrough they decided to give away the formula, and to provide the pills they manufacture at cost. They’ve done their darndest to minimize the costs, and therefore the price, but it requires some rare materials or something that makes the manufacturing process very expensive.
If it costs a million dollars a pop simply due to the salaries of the manufacturers and not because of a limited supply, then supply and demand would bring the cost down to an affordable level. If the cost is due to a very limited supply, then it should go to those who can afford it, or those who can steal it.
Well, if the entire situation is hypothetical, then I can just hypothesize that Giant Squids arise from the ocean floor and provide everyone with enough sunken treasure that we all can afford the pill. But if you want a real debate, you have to focus it a bit.
You say that Happy Pill is not making a profit. Right away, the project is doomed to be short lived unless you are hypothesizing that HP has unlimited cash assets. So it seems only fitting that the company offer the pill to its shareholders. They’re the ones who are going broke.