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Comment by deelowe | Hacker News Reader

Whether or not an individual pays for it has nothing to do with the pricing the manufacturer sets. In fact, setting prices becomes even more of a concern when these things are being funded by tax dollars as the government is going to need a way of determining what's reasonable.

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Anglo-Saxons (in general, not all, but in particular Americans) are so very weird when it comes to the "free market".

IMO (dirty socialist/communist that I am), healthcare is not part of the free market. The industry providing healthcare should be strictly regulated and no benefits allowed.

Also, what's worth healthcare compared to the US DOD spending?

Quite a lot actually. US defense spending in 2014 was $614 billion, 3.5% of GDP. US healthcare spending in 2014 was estimated by the world bank as 17.1% of GDP.

That's total spending, but even in terms of public money, the US is at 8.3% of GDP: larger than Belgium, the UK, Switzerland, Finland, Canada and many others.

This would certainly be possible but would require a major change in gov't research funding, including many extra billions for drug R&D, "productionizing" research, and large scale clinical trials; since a "no benefits allowed" industry wouldn't be investing to create drugs like this one.

>The industry providing healthcare should be strictly regulated and no benefits allowed.

Then how would anyone be interested in launching such a company or working in that industry ?

urg

Some people believe other people to be fundamentally good and not interested only in personal enrichment (financial enrichment I mean here).

But some of you make me doubt that.

But why are some people quantum physicists researchers ? Why are there mathematicians and biologists ? They don't earn much.

Your line of thinking is so stupid and self-centered, it really makes me want to use swear words.

Public research is rather different from launching a company. It's not exactly the same hassle nor honors. There's some difference between understanding the world and selling stuff. Research rarely has products in mind, at least it's not its primary goal, unlike companies. They also don't have clients, which is a central thing for companies (and not the most enjoyable one).

And guess the reason why many researchers end up in private companies ?

Thanks for the insult, I thought this community was supposed to be mature.

When a manufacturer sets the price, they want to recoup the costs and then make a profit on each unit sold.

When a government funds the research, the marginal cost for each unit provided is time and materials, with no profit.

Government funds projects every day that are waste, spending tens, even hundreds of millions of dollars. We can continue to pour money down the F-35 drain but not provide healthcare? Make America Intellectually Honest Again

I still think it might be best if government funds the research and then allows anyone with the capability to use it. In other words, no patents. There would be competition and the price would come down. The big problem I have with this suggestion is that I don't believe in governments ability to do anything cost effectively - even funding research - but I might be wrong.

Dean Baker, an economist, has written here and there about alternative ways to pay for drug research:

"There are clearly better and worse ways to structure a system of government financed research. For example, the Free Market Drug Act, a bill recently introduced in the U.S. Congress, called for establishing a set of competing government corporations that would be evaluated at periodic intervals (e.g. 10 years) for the quality of their work. The worst performers would be put out of business with new ones created to take their place."

More here:

http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue32/Baker32.htm

http://cepr.net/publications/briefings/testimony/drugs-are-c...

Considering the number of poorly performing gov't programs, I'm sure the "quality of their work" would be based on things other that actual output. Nepotism and buying votes are probably more likely.

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