The Horrors of Socialized Healthcare

[DarthKyrie]

lol. An ancient addiction of mine. 🙂

That was a quote from The Water Boy. Cathy Bates calls football, foosball in the movie. It's one of mine as well.

 

[Victorian Gray]

That was a quote from The Water Boy. Cathy Bates calls football, foosball in the movie. It's one of mine as well.

Oops. Thought you were talking about this



And it *is* the devil. 😉

 

[Sunburn74]

Remember one thing, those drugs exist because the US subsidizes development which allows others to pay less. I'm not saying it's right or fair, but it is what it is and so a new paradigm is really really what we need.

Hmmm... 2-3x as much is spent by drug companies on advertisement and marketing than actual drug development. More importantly the majority of actual drug development costs come from NIH tax dollars. In the 1970s there were congressional proposals to mandate that the government gets a cut of drug profits (essentially like a dividend for an investment) due to essentially funding the research that led to those drugs but those proposals died on the vine due to lobbying.

 

[whm1974]

Hmmm... 2-3x as much is spent by drug companies on advertisement and marketing than actual drug development. More importantly the majority of actual drug development costs come from NIH tax dollars. In the 1970s there were congressional proposals to mandate that the government gets a cut of drug profits (essentially like a dividend for an investment) due to essentially funding the research that led to those drugs but those proposals died on the vine due to lobbying.

I would be fine with this, as the Feds would actually make money to fund farther drug/medical research that benefits everyone.

 

[pmv]

Mind naming some of those motivators? In particular, motivators in today's times

Great shame that no-one managed to get a patent on 'fire' or 'the wheel'. Just think how much more innovation we'd have had, as people tried to get round the patent...hexagonal wheels, square wheels...

 

[pmv]

I believe there's _some_ truth in the notion of profit-seeking as a motivator for innovation, but I just think it's way more complicated than that. Clearly people do things for reasons other than money, just look at all the 'stars' in various industries who could retire comfortably tomorrow but mysteriously don't (including some of the music and movie stars where one kind-of wishes they would).