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Comment by leereeves | Hacker News Reader

Bezos and Amazon aren't the reason children lack access to proper healthcare and taxing them won't fix that problem.

To provide proper healthcare to every child (and adult) on earth we'd need to stop the people who are currently limiting the availability of healthcare: the hospital cartels preventing the construction of new hospitals, the medical associations preventing the training of more doctors, the pharmaceutical companies preventing the free trade of medicines, and the governments colluding in all that.

But they'll fight that every step of the way and one of them most effective ways they fight it is by talking about money, as if lack of healthcare spending was the problem. It's not. We'd actually spend less on a more accessible healthcare system, because all the people sucking the money and life out of the current system wouldn't be getting richer.

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> the governments colluding in all that

What possible incentive do governments worldwide have to actively prevent child healthcare? Even a cold-hearted monster who only cares about money has an economic incentive for the population generally to not die of easily preventable causes before retirement, and would know that letting them die before they enter the workforce is literally the most wasteful option. And almost nobody is that heartless about children.

Unfortunately some politicians care more about money from donors, and the healthcare and pharma lobbies donate a lot of money.

For example, why does the US government sanction countries that import or manufacture generic versions of patented drugs? Manufacturing these lifesaving drugs doesn't cost much. They could be sold much cheaper to a lot more people.

These politicians probably don't think of it as actively preventing healthcare, but medications could be as cheap as Coca Cola if not for laws that prioritize profits over lives.

The healthcare industry does a lot of really shady things, but you're picking the worst example.

No doubt drugs could be cheaper, but denying pharma an incentive to ever develop them is not the answer. Of course manufacturing is cheap, but the research and clinical trials are expensive and have to be paid for somehow. Focusing on only the manufacturing costs is a bizarre combination of dumb and disingenuous.

> denying pharma an incentive to ever develop them is not the answer

Research needs an incentive. It doesn't have to include a for-profit pharma company. Quite a bit of the research is publicly funded anyway, so why not publically fund the clinical trials as well? The answer, of course, is that people who are making money off the current system won't let things change.

Ignoring the people dying because they can't afford to pay for the research is heartless. A previous post suggested "almost nobody is that heartless about children", but it appears the people in charge really are that heartless.

Trials also need incentive. Everything does. Is your answer is to nationalize everything? If not, where do you draw the line? The world doesn't work the way you want it to and you're not making a real argument that it should.

More people die if research isn't done _and_ developed. In no way does just not paying improve the situation.

"Think of the children" is just an empty appeal to emotion over reason. Great indicator of a bad faith argument though.

I think it's reasonable to nationalize everything that saves lives. That's where I would draw the line. I support public pharma research (and trials, and drug development, and other expenses) for the same reason I support public healthcare and public firefighting.

Remember that once upon a time, firefighting companies would stand outside a burning building and watch it burn until the owner paid up? That's pretty much the current situation with healthcare - the healthcare and pharma companies just watch patients die if they can't afford to pay.

But nationalization isn't my suggestion for the problem of pharma patents preventing healthcare in impoverished countries. For that, just let those countries ignore US patents. They don't have a lot of money anyway, so allowing them to use lifesaving medications would not imperil pharma research.

Of course you're right, the world doesn't work the way I want it to, but I think saving lives is an excellent argument why it should.

If you think that's "bad faith" or "an empty appeal to emotion over reason", then there's really nothing more to say.

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