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Comment by eatitraw | Hacker News Reader

I don't get your point.

> No sane person will buy brain surgery if he has no problems even if it 1$ and he has no choice but to buy one at whatever cost if he has.

So what? Also, if there are multiple methods to treat his conditions, he may choose more expensive(or more cheap) method. Also, he may choose not to have brain surgery -- and sadly suffer or die. Socialism is hardly a solution here, if state will fail to provide necessary amount of surgeons to fulfill demand for them, then people will die too(not mentioning that there always be better methods and better qualified surgeons, so you won't be able to achieve the same level of healthcare anyway).

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First - if I cannot afford a treatment not getting it is not a choice.

A choice is when I have insurance and refuse chemo because the side effects outweigh the benefits.

I am not talking about socialism. I am talking that we should treat the healthcare system the same way that we treat power plants and energy distribution utilities. A system of grants and loans that ensures long term supply of goods. So you pay your bills each month but the government takes care of you not being price gouged (except in California)

In the US (disclaimer - most I know for the healthcare is from the media, non US citizen) a good starting point will be forfeiting and subsidizing medical education so the graduates will be loan free. Also the government should not leave R&D to the private sector but create human health Manhattan project - this will have the benefits of everything that comes out of it entering public domain so no royalties patents and other shit to take care of.

A good healthcare system should be like interstate etc. It is there it is low margin but enables the society to move faster towards the future.

> First - if I cannot afford a treatment not getting it is not a choice.

The same is true in your system, substituting "afford" for whatever verb is better suited for your proposed system.

> Also the government should not leave R&D

Government leaving R&D to private sector(which is major source of funding even now, at least in the USA) would be the great decision. It will stop crowding out resources from private R&D, thus making R&D more effective and more beneficial to economy.

Patents are the separate issue. There is the flaw in your logic. Patents are government granted. You view them as undesirable, but your solution is even more government. However, the logical solution would be abolishing patents.

> Government leaving R&D to private sector(which is major source of funding even now, at least in the USA) would be the great decision.

The only people who claim this are those who have no idea what constitutes anything near blue skies research. Anything worth looking into for the mid to long term is going to have questionable profit potential and therefore not conducive to profit seeking.

There's a reason why most research uni's are public and the results are dumped out for industry to exploit, and it's not because it steals the talent by paying so well.

> You view them as undesirable, but your solution is even more government. However, the logical solution would be abolishing patents.

So your plan is to incentivize private R&D by abolishing IP. Hahahahahaha.

> The only people who claim this are those who have no idea what constitutes anything near blue skies research.

This is simply untrue, there is a great book by Terence Kealey: "Sex, science and profits", you should check it: http://amzn.com/B0045JKEQ2

> So your plan is to incentivize private R&D by abolishing IP. Hahahahahaha.

No, private R&D do not require additional incentives beyond those arising naturally by market forces.

Mid to long term research probably doesn't pay off inside the patent window so what does it matter? If I discovered a technology that's 30 years from adoption who cares if I can get a patent? It will be expired by the time I have any ability to make money from it.

Drugs usually have about 7 years on their patents before generics can hit the market. Since it costs sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars in R&D for one drug to hit the market, the patent period is extremely important.

Particularly since the drug must clear the FDA and there is potential for recall.

(I'm from Europe) Does the word "socialism" actually mean something different in the US, or is it just an abuse of notation? I see this all the time. I don't see what worker-owned means of production has to do with the efficacy of healthcare.

No, it's just that most people who rail against socialism don't actually know what it means, as you see above.

afaik it's been bastardized into meaning government-run or something like that. Or it's a mixup with socialized healthcare. Wikipedia has more https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialized_medicine

> Socialism is hardly a solution here,

Even though every other OECD country save Mexico provides more socialized medicine with essentially universal coverage, produces equal or better overall health outcomes than the US, and spends far less per capita and per GDP on health care than the US. But, yeah, sure, "socialism is no help here", because if it was, that would require people to reconsider their laissez-faire religion.

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