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Comment by jrimbault | Hacker News Reader

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?

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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.

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