Chapter 113: Plant-based Pharmaceuticals (6)

The founding of A-Gen Life and its insurance product became a huge issue. There was also a debate in the public over whether it could be viewed as an insurance product or not. It was because the insurance business A-Gen Life started was very different compared to the existing insurance business in many ways.

They were selling a unique product to high-risk people who existing insurance companies would not take. The price of diagnostic kits was included in the premium, and the customer would pay the premium.

If the customer self-diagnosed with the diagnostic kit and did not develop cancer until the expiry date, it was the end. A-Gen Life would provide compensation. If the customer developed cancer, but that compensation would not cover medical expenses; instead, it was more similar to giving them treatment through their next-generation hospital.

Additionally, the range of treatment was different depending on the product. For example, if there was a customer that had a 0.001% incidence rate for stomach cancer and a forty-five percent incidence rate for breast cancer, this customer could get insurance only for breast cancer, or they could get it for stomach cancer as well.

The premium would go up as they got more insurance, but it wouldn’t be much more expensive than the products existing insurance companies sold even if they got every kind of insurance they could get.

If the customer developed the cancer covered by the product they purchased, they could receive compensation for all kinds of treatments until they were cured or died. The customer could even receive chimeric immunotherapy in the case of myeloma or blood cancer. In other words, they could receive a four hundred million won treatment.

However, a situation where a technology like that would have to be used wouldn’t happen because the diagnostic kit would find the disease before it became that serious. There wouldn’t be a patient who would develop the disease on purpose as they weren’t receiving money, but just treatment. Early myeloma and blood cancer could be cured quickly with treatments like Clivan. The one problem was that Clivan was an expensive drug, but the Plant team solved this problem. It was the first drug they had achieved results for among the fifteen target drugs.

—A-Gen has succeeded in producing Clivan from plant cells. A single tobacco plant can yield enough Clivan for ten patients to use for a day. Jang Jin-Ho, a principal scientist at A-Gen’s Plant-based Pharmaceuticals Research Department, believes that this technology will be able to reduce the price of Clivan from one hundred ten thousand won per pill to one thousand won...

The news about A-Gen’s technological innovation was on television and in newspapers every day. It was Alimap and Clutinib first, and now it was Clivan. The plant-based pharmaceutical production method quickly penetrated the existing pharmaceutical production market. It was absorbing drugs at a rapid pace and creating a revolution.

“The insurance business that A-Gen will be doing is not a financial game with capital. A-Gen Life is not guaranteeing financial compensation, but treatment. As it is a subsidiary of A-Gen, the premium that customers pay will go to A-Gen and be reinvested in research and development. It is a way to develop cheaper and better treatments to account for our customer’s health and divide the risk of incidence.”

Young-Joon explained A-Gen Life in more detail in the interview article that was released after the press conference. During that, he also commenced on the newly amended legislation about the usage of genetic test results.

“According to the current amended legislation, if an insurance company asks A-Gen to view data with the consent of the customer, A-Gen will have to show them the customer’s genetic test results. There are no conditions for the data analysis methods or data selection.

"I get the impression that the congressman who proposed the bill handled the matter hastily without a deep understanding of genetic testing. For example, the bill states that the original data must be delivered. Original data refers to raw data, but would insurance companies be able to analyze that? Furthermore, would data about an HPV infection be required for insurance against leukemia?

“DNA information can be personal information that is much more confidential and important than their Resident Registration Number[1] or home address, as it is a powerful criterion for explaining what kind of person they are. Sensitive health information like this, which could even affect employment, should be as secure as possible. It should be about only providing properly processed analytical data about the genetic test results related to the insurance product the customer is trying to buy. Additionally, the insurance companies must strictly protect this information.”

After Young-Joon’s interview was released, the public opinion, which was confused for a moment, was wiped clean. The conspiracy theories about how Young-Joon sold customer information from A-Gen to insurance companies disappeared completely. All that was left was backlash.

—What happened to all the bastards who said that Ryu Young-Joon sold genetic test data and whatnot?

—Can’t you tell from the Cellicure incident? That TMJ wouldn’t do that. I don’t know why people are ripping him apart over something so obvious.

—But it’s so obvious that they are all part-time workers. Weren’t existing insurance just keeping him in check?

—But what do you have to do to sign up for A-Gen Life’s insurance?

—I have SG Life’s insurance, but I want to cancel it and go to A-Gen Life.

—???: If the customer is a high-risk patient, don’t you just have to get rid of the risk? Why can’t people do that?

└He conquered all of STEM, and now he’s swallowing up the Arts.

—I want to ask about A-Gen Life’s insurance. Where do I call?

An insurance product that one could buy even if they had a high incidence rate, family history, or past medical history. Plus, it was cheap, and what they were guaranteeing was not money, but a cure. Of course, there would be cases where it failed and the company would suffer losses as the patient died, but it could be minimized.

A-Gen received questions from people about how they could get this insurance even before A-Gen Life was established. It was more than the inquiries that A-Bio received about the genetic testing service. And this situation that was happening at A-Gen strongly motivated pharmaceutical companies and botanists all around the world.

“We have to dive into this before A-Gen develops all those new drugs,” David, the CEO of Conson & Colson, said at the board meeting. “CEO Ryu probably patented the plant-based pharmaceutical production method. Let’s look for a way to avoid that, and if there isn’t, we have to give him whatever amount of royalties and use that technology. The future trend will completely change to plant-based pharmaceuticals. Let’s make a production line right away, and recruit a lot of scientists who studied plants.”

“David, MetLife has contacted us,” said one of the directors.”

“MetLife?”

MetLife was a gigantic health insurance company.

𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

“They asked whether we can do the same thing CEO Ryu is doing right now. They want to work with us if we can.“

“...”

David thought for a moment.

“Honestly, it will take us a few years to catch up with A-Gen’s technology...”

“We have to follow them even if we are slow. This is the right direction.”

“I knew they would be a powerful enemy when they released the glaucoma product, but now, it seems like they are getting ahead. We all have to work harder. Set up a meeting with MetLife.”

* * *

“Fxxk, is he serious?”

There was nothing Hwang Joon-Young, the CEO of SG Life, could do as he watched the situation unfold. There was a saying that getting too big of a shock could paralyze the brain... A huge predator had appeared in the industry, but he couldn’t think of any countermeasures because he was so dumbfounded.

“Sir, what do we do now...?” Baek Joong-Hyuk asked cautiously.

“How should I know? How will we stop that? Is that really an insurance product?”

“...”

“What do you think, Director Lim?” he asked.

Lim Gil-Won said nothing. He was lost in thought while staring into space with a blank face.

“Director Lim?”

“Yes?”

Lim Gil-Won’s head shot up.

“Young, smart people like Director Lim should think of some ideas on how we should respond to this crisis.”

“...”

Lim Gil-Won thought for a while. To be honest, he felt both extreme fear and astonishment at the establishment of A-Gen Life. The fear was that major insurance companies including SG Life were now going to have to compete with A-Gen Life, and the astonishment was from A-Gen Life’s surprising idea. An insurance company that guaranteed treatment itself rather than reimbursing treatment fees or giving millions of won as a reward... He had never thought they would do this with new technologies like diagnostic kits or plant-based treatments. Lim Gil-Won believed that technological advancements like this were far from finance businesses like insurance, but it was so closely related.

“We should have beat them to the punch,” said Lim Gil-Won. “We should have reached out to CEO Ryu before and asked him to work together as we want to develop these kinds of insurance products. I put this on the agenda several times before...”

“Ahem!” Baek Joong-Hyuk cleared his throat. “Director Lim, you are not blaming me, are you?”

“... Of course not.”

“Even if we reached out to CEO Ryu, he would not have given us an item that big. This was inevitable,” Baek Joong-Hyuk said.

‘Really? Would he have not?’

Lim Gil-Won analyzed Young-Joon quite closely. He was an extremely smart person, but he didn’t really want money, which was a relief to other businesspeople. If his goal was to get rich, he probably would not have worked on something like plant-based pharmaceuticals, which would drastically reduce drug prices. He also had more than one hundred personal parents, did he not? It would be better for him to make a new drug with his ingenuity; why would he reduce the unit price of drugs and negatively affect his own livelihood?

‘If we offered to do A-Gen Life’s insurance business first, Ryu Young-Joon might have collaborated with us and helped us.’

Young-Joon didn’t even have enough time to focus on his own research, and he probably didn’t want to use his energy on something else.

However, it was all too late.

“There is nothing we can do now. We are not in the position to receive research results directly from A-Gen like A-Gen Life. We don’t have enough information nor do we have that kind of pharmaceutical technology... There is no way to fight that strange hybrid business with financial business alone.”

* * *

Young-Joon, who has been working at Lab One for a while, returned to A-Bio. It has been a while. He felt like he had come back to his comfortable base camp. He had actually spent most of his time at A-Gen’s Lab One after graduating from school, but he felt more familiar with A-Bio.

He took the elevator up to get to his office.

Pop!

Confetti popped in front of the elevator doors as they opened. The Life Creation Team along with a few scientists were standing in front and clapping.

“What is this?”

“To congratulate your three trophies—Lab One Director at A-Gen, CEO of A-Bio, and CEO of A-Gen Life,” Park Dong-Hyun said.

“Ah, no. What are you talking about? Why would I run an insurance company?”

Young-Joon waved his hand in denial.

“Then what?”

“The majority of A-Gen Life’s shares are owned by A-Gen and A-Bio. We are the owners, but we are going to hire a professional manager to run the company.”

“Who are you going to hit?”

“We are going to have to think about it. We will do an open recruitment and do interviews to find the best candidate. I do have someone who I want to hire personally, but we have to make it a fair process.”

“Who is it?” Jung Hae-Rim asked.

“A senior managing director at SG Life. He became an executive in his forties, and it seems he is pretty famous in that field.”

Cheon Ji-Myung interrupted.

“It won’t be easy to recruit someone like that even if we ask him to come. And there is no way he would volunteer and do an interview...”

“It’s okay if we can’t.”

As Young-Joon was chatting, Park Joo-Hyuk appeared at the end of the hall.

“Oh! Ryu Young-Joon! ... Sir.”

He shouted because he was glad to see Young-Joon, but quickly changed into a formal tone.

“I have something to discuss with you,” Park Joo-Hyuk said.

He took Young-Joon to Young-Joon’s office, pushed him inside, and sat in the chair across from him.

“Did you finish your business at Lab One?” he asked.

“Yeah, I guess. I’ll be able to direct them from here. Thankfully, the lab is close to here.”

“Yeah. Anyways, look at this.”

Park Joo-Hyuk pulled out a few documents. He showed Young-Joon each one and explained them.

“We caught the people who left comments insinuating that you sold private customer information.”

“How did you catch them?”

“We reported them to the police for defamation, then contacted them saying that we were the legal team from A-Bio. They all started crying when we told him that.”

“Just let them go. I don’t really care.”

“I would have. What’s the big deal about a bunch of couch-potato keyboard warriors talking crap about you at your level? But there’s a reason I didn’t let them go.”

“What is it?”

“SG Life wrote those comments to manipulate public opinion. And there is evidence of them confessing here. too.”

Park Joo-Hyuk tapped on the documents with his finger.

1. a national identification method in Korea ?