Rich people from all around the world travel to American hospitals if they have serious health problems, not to public hospitals even in rich countries like Norway. Public healthcare works (poorly) as a way to distribute existing treatment, but is worthless at incentivizing development. Really, the entire world is unfairly parasitizing on Americans to fund medical research.
One example of cancer outcomes on a per country basis: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/cancer-su...
Just google medical outcomes for any disease on a per country basis.
Do you really think the best hospitals in France or somehow worse than the best hospitals in the USA? Especially when the best hospitals in the USA still have the same fundamental problems as the rest of the American system?
I am aware that most of the cutting edge clinical trials in my field occur in the US. I have also seen people travel to the US for treatment of rare diseases. And I know that this isn't a surprising thing for the US in general, just look at our universities.
It's actually pretty funny that the only other response I got was someone saying that this is super obvious/true across fields in the US and thus not an interesting statement.
I don't know if it is a weird American bias or what. I'd take a look at the bias there and this belief in American exceptionalism as it doesn't pan out in the data.
Cutting edge clinical trials and those companies are global in nature. I mean just look at the Moderna team and where they conducted those.
That's basically the case for everything in America, so I'm not sure that it says anything remarkable about the American healthcare system.
Like can you think of anything else in America that you couldn't apply that statement to?
Capitalism works only with competition. But competition is against capital owners short-term extractionism (or rather against ceos who feels need to justify their pay). IMO solution is to let workers vote on CEO pay changes and punish white collar crime better and many problems of capitalism might get solved.
EDIT: IMO it won’t work as long as globalization can be exploited to suppress working class and avoid regulation
Do the drug companies in Europe do any different though?
What should it cost instead?
> Dude was living off of government research grants.
Let's imagine his work comes to fruition. The drug is expensive but efficacious - is this not a good thing? Should the government have not helped fund this drug because now it's expensive?
The alternative is a world without that drug and without as much incentive to produce the drug. I'm not sure that's a good trade.
Which segues nicely to this pairing of public funding and private enterprise. No, if the drug wouldn't be sold for a profit then the incentive to make it wouldn't exist and the funds would not be applied for and the ironic pairing - if it is ironic, which I don't think it is - wouldn't exist either.
Unless we're going to believe that researchers go through the mill of applying for funding and doing research simply to get the funding and stay in badly paid employment?
Can’t displace Chomsky as a famous linguist if he writes a letter to everyone’s dissertation committee if they criticize him.
> When he was asked what the device would cost, he cheerily replied "whatever the market will bear."
I also do not need to assume that companies undertaking research are doing it for profit as that is their reason for being companies, and even in the case of research being not directly undertaken for profit, that research - if useful - will go into drugs that are then sold with the intention of making a profit. Not solely, whether cynically or altruistically, the hope will be that the drug is effective.
To patients? It should be free.
To society? The initial research cost plus the bare manufacturing cost.
Someone has to pay. Who pays?
> To society? The initial research cost plus the bare manufacturing cost.
And we're back to a society which is poorer in terms of both health and wealth.
If you remove the profit motive then investment falls, new medicines become less likely and lesser in number, and medicines remain higher in cost due to lack of pressure (competition from new drugs, competition from new entrants, new techniques etc).
Altruism, necessary as it is, does not fill that void alone, and it certainly won't be filled by hoping government makes everything "free".
The last 200 years proven otherwise. All basic research around airplanes, semiconductors, satellites, GPS, GSM, fiber optics, CD/DVD and much much more was almost entirely tax funded.
No, the government should set a reasonable price for the product they funded. A high enough price to fund manufacturing, a low enough price to ensure that people who need the treatment have ready access to it. If the upper bound on price is too low for universal access, that's what subsidies are for.
Instead, we have free money to bootstrap extractive capitalists, at cost and detriment to people who need care.
Do the investors at the company you work at set the prices for the products you produce? That would be strange.
> Instead, we have free money to bootstrap extractive capitalists, at cost and detriment to people who need care.
It's "free" money because the capital costs are high and it's risky. I don't think it's the only or the best way but it is a valid way, but it doesn't remove the right to make a profit.
As to it being "detriment[al]" to the people who need care, they're getting a drug that didn't exist before, right? And this also should (generally) make existing drugs cheaper, right?
If he wants to charge "what the market will bear," then he should fund the research through the market.
If he wants government handouts to do the research then the public deserves to get the benefit that it's paying for - we're not funding it to make some guy rich.
I'm not saying it should be free, but he's already opted out of the market, so he loses out on market pricing. Manufacturing cost plus some reasonable percentage for the creator.
The government (which is really a government of and for the people, right?;) gets what it wants - a new drug - and jobs are created, trade happens, taxes are levied, health improves leading to (theoretical) money saved, more hours worked, more taxes… There's no need to punish the creator by not letting them make money off of their creation just because the government was involved, the government is getting plenty out of their investment.
So? Nobody has a right to free money. If investors don't want to fund the research, and the researcher doesn't want to share the results with the public, then no money for them. They can go off and work on something else.
> There's no need to punish the creator by not letting them make money off of their creation just because the government was involved, the government is getting plenty out of their investment.
You're putting words in my mouth. I said the cost of government funded drugs should be the cost of manufacturing plus a percentage for the inventor.
Second, that's not how government funding works. If the public funds a thing, then the public has a right to use that thing. If the inventor doesn't like it, then they shouldn't take funding from the government.
Funny to see a pro-corporate welfare argument on HN.
It's not so that's your mistake.
> > I'm all for cutting subsidies,
You see, I wrote that. However, as we can see when I continue I am able to see the benefits to a system I don't agree with. It's called being reasonable and not strawmanning your opponent.
> > but the problem is that if you want risky things then investors might decide it's better not to invest and the drugs never appear.
> So?
So… I gave that argument right there. "the problem is that if you want risky things then investors might decide it's better not to invest and the drugs never appear." If your response to this is "So?" then you've just said "So?" to "the drugs never appear". Strangely unappealing.
> Nobody has a right to free money.
Aside from having not made that argument and it not being relevant, you're arguing that people should get free drugs. Nobody has a right to free drugs. Now you're arguing against yourself.
> > There's no need to punish the creator by not letting them make money off of their creation just because the government was involved, the government is getting plenty out of their investment.
> You're putting words in my mouth.
Which words? Punishment? Ah, the percentage.
> I said the cost of government funded drugs should be the cost of manufacturing plus a percentage for the inventor.
How magnanimous of you. What would you set the percentage at? How would you get companies to manufacture things at cost for you? That's just not how a business survives, and the only people I've ever heard make this kind of argument are people who've never run a business and never will.
> Second, that's not how government funding works. If the public funds a thing, then the public has a right to use that thing.
No, that's not how government funding works, that's how you appear to think it should work in this fantasy you've constructed. Governments often provide funding to private companies that do not create some magical legal right to that company's products.
> If the inventor doesn't like it, then they shouldn't take funding from the government.
I'll repeat, that's not how government funding works. I'm against subsidies in general and in this case but I'd take this dysfunctional way over yours.