The pull of JPM may be irresistible, but will San Francisco’s problems push people away?

SAN FRANCISCO — If you were to ask health-care and biotech executives where they want to be next week — where they truly want to be — they will not say San Francisco. Anywhere, they will say, but San Francisco.

There’s the garbage and the human excrement on the sidewalks. There’s the mad dash to try find available accommodations. There’s the panhandling, evidence of the city’s handling of its worsening homelessness crisis. Oh, and there’s the $14,000 meeting cubicles and the coffee, available (this is true) for $170 per gallon.

And yet everyone who’s anyone will be here during the four days of “JPM Week” — the biotech industry’s largest and most important business and networking meeting, headlined by the J.P Morgan Healthcare Conference.

The pull of the conference is irresistible, and has been since its founding in 1983. It is the first health-care conference of the year, where companies and investors set expectations for the rest of the year. Licensing deals and acquisitions valued in the billions of dollars can be traced back to meetings first held during JPM Week.

But the soaring costs of JPM Week have