@Orathaic
"There is of course a solution, you socialise the pharma industry."
alright, let's see your proof.
"Simples. All basic research is currently done by Universities,"
ALREADY YOU ARE WRONG WHAT THE HELL.
https://www.aol.com/article/2010/11/30/where-do-new-drugs-come-from-u-s-biotechs-lead-the-way/19709158/'
biotechs lead the way with innovative drugs, and the current ratios for ALL drugs are as such:
pharmaceutical companies: 58%
biotech: 18%
universities that gave their research to those two companies got 24%
the article does praise universities too, but they are MUCH less cost efficient for research hours on drugs to total cost procured.
on a level of efficiency AND quality, universities are not the best.
nowadays the most profitable drugs are being addressed by finding innovative drugs, and so pharmaceutical companies are slowly gaining on universities. the free market is beating out the public sector.
"which in most states are socialised and not private institutions, and i believe this should stay that way. And once the government owns the patents, thry can sell drugs at whatever price they want."
another point to make: the government has to pay all the employees creating new drugs, right now at 24%, they'll have to quadruple their work staff to meet full demand
(and that's assuming they're as efficient as companies, which is also NOT true. however, i'll be generous, let's assume we ONLY need to triple.)
The National Institute of Health invests over 30 billion dollars in search development and funding, so now that is going to have to be another 90 billion dollars that taxpayers have to pay.
Furthermore there are about 300,000 researchers, at about 2,500 universities doing this research, so we'll have to EMPLOY another 900,000 Americans full time. at a lower standard of living for ACADEMICS at $24,000 per person (AND IT WILL BE MORE THAN THAT!!!) that's approximately 21,600,000,000 (21 BILLION MORE, and that's is a VERY LOW estimate) that taxpayers will have to pay for.
furthermore, we'll have to create new buildings and infrastructure, because those 2,500 universities can't house all those kids, so that's BILLIONS more.
source for my numbers: straight from the government
https://www.nih.gov/about-nih/what-we-do/budget
"You get hetter drugs if you remove the profit motive, because you no longer need to hide failed drug trails from the FDA to get something passed approval... Everybody wins."
1. the profit motive is what makes the free market more efficient that government
2. there's another way, that doesn't cost the taxpayer HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS: create massive liabilities for hiding studies
and there's another factor we haven't even considered, taking pharmaceuticals into a socialized system removes ALL investment opportunities, which are a MAJOR source of tax revenue.
congratulations, you just defunded the government, while increasing the national budget by maybe 20%, if not more.
"What, pray tell, is the difference? Apart from the fact that companies can threat states and cities that they will move state/city and lose local jobs, whereas at the federal level the government is more immune to these kinds of threats... (But not entirely - what with Mexico and China...)"
oh god you don't know what i'm talking about. i mean if a state wants to create a public fund risk pool that the community can use to pay (full price) for drugs.
that won't affect companies at all... it might even help profits.
"You know, you haven't been aroud as long and me and Yanick, so you're no idea why i muted him.
And it would have been easier to copy and paste his responce than to write what you did. So you're coming off as rather disengenuous. If you're not interested in the conversation, kindly fuck off."
@Zmaj he muted me because he hates ideas that aren't his own. I haven't muted ANYONE, and i disagree with a lot of people on this site. censoring out ideas that don't agree with yours, is a sign of intellectual laziness.
@SamWest
"This can be a debate about details forever, but socialized medicine has worked in other countries and would also be feasible in the US."
you need to see my earlier posts on this. most of their costs are low, because they take American drugs, turn them into generics, and sell them. meanwhile, the USA has the full costs plus more. this is why despite manufacturing dying in the USA, medical manufacturing is actually increasing. it's because Europe is SOOO bad for them. only the free market nordic countries have hope for them (yes sweden has more free markets than the USA) and if you want us to make this a bad place for drugs, then healthcare costs are going to skyrocket WorldWide.
"It's really a moral question, not a practical one."
depends on what you mean by practical. we're talking tax rates not he middle class that hit at an average rate of 30-40%+. for the upper class? even higher. and that's with rising drug costs, and the increased demand costs for more treatment.
"Any system has scarcity/rationing, that's the whole point of economics. So you can either support a free market system where rationing is done by price and poor people go bankrupt paying medical bills, or you can support a socialized system where everyone assumes a little bit of the scarcity/rationing through waits for procedures."
and through discrimination against the elderly, death panels (yes they have death panels, this is not some right wing myth. Even Slate wrote an article PRAISING death panels in Canada. it's gone fucking insane)
the truth is, if we lower the cost of drugs and treatment, more people can afford them.
"For as much as people like to shit on England's NHS, it's been devastated by three decades of Tory cuts, which cause a lot of the long lines people complain about now. But again, it's details. Do you want rich people to have the greatest healthcare in the world and poor people to die, or do you want everyone to have okay healthcare? That's the question. Anything else is just obfuscating it."
it's not a matter of "want" it's a matter of "force"
should i be allowed to FORCE money out of the hands of people who worked for it (THE MIDDLE CLASS TOO) or is that immoral.
"Just adding to this, not trying to spam. Trying to pre-empt an argument about European socialized medicine. We hear stories about long lines, which again, come from a lot of the neoliberal cuts that have happened in the past thirty years."
yes but thirty years ago treatment was much cheaper due to the lessens ABILITY to treat people. nowadays technology allows for much more treatment, so the lines progress
"Canadians love to grouse about waiting for procedures. And yet, polling in every country with socialized medicine consistently shows broad public support for the programs. Everyone loves them."
and if i stole someone else's money, i'd LOVE that extra income. it doesn't make it moral, or something the government should do. the Nazi's LOVED killing Jews. pleasure does not indicate a moral superiority.
"Margaret Thatcher, the Iron Lady, couldn't kill the National Health Service because it was political suicide to be against it. Socialized medicine is popular with the population."
so? everyone likes free shit from rich people to, but the more you abuse the rich, the more likely they are to leave.
"That's a metric of success for me."
it's pretty shit then, because more 3rd world countries have the lowest depression rates. happiness is not a measure of quality of life, or quality of morals, believe it or not.
"Just look at Medicaid expansion-- part of the reason Trump couldn't do a full repeal is because it would be hugely unpopular to do so and Republicans in places that had accepted Medicare expansion were worried about losing their seats (also the nuts in the Freedom Caucus, but that's another story.) Obamacare is now more popular than Trump, and it's not even true socialized medicine."
polls show that Obamacare is popular, the ACA is not. of course they're the exact same thing. the American people aren't exactly the most qualified here.
"If the American free market healthcare system was so great, why was "healthcare" consistently a huge worry for Americans in polling,"
it wasn't ever great. it was super-regulated which raised costs, and Democrats created tons of loopholes for companies, so they could get away with bad drugs. the FDA picks up the slack, so companies can be lazy. you don't believe the Democrats are bought? Check Hillary's pharmaceutical donations, compared to other candidates. I hate Trump, but if you actually talk to his supporters instead of calling them racists, then a VERY COMMON complaint is big Pharma and Hillary. think back, you know it's true.
"and why has their been consistent support for an expanded government role in the industry?"
because people like free stuff. it's not hard to understand, but it certainly is against the founding principles of the country.
"What conservatives hate to admit is that their economic ideas are pretty deeply unpopular. People like government programs that help them. I say let them have it."
so if people vote from someone who takes all the money form the top 1%, and perfectly redistributes it to the people, that is morally correct?
as long as the people en masse support it, it can't be bad? this is the logic you are working with, but enough people in this country have realized that morality is not the same as mob rule.
I had an earlier post that i think applies here:
if you think the poor's freedom should be restrained, and the rich should be free, you're a slaver.
if you think the rich's freedom should be restrained, and the poor should be free, you're a socialist.
if you think all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, THEN you understand what America was founded upon. if you do not agree with that, then this is not the country for you
Sassy Donald Trump
)
)
)
)