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Comment by stuckinhell | Hacker News Reader

Disgustingly high.

I find it furious how american citizens are force to subsidize the entire world. https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2016/11/30/12945756/p... My mother needs insulin to live, and lives off her mediocre pension. I don't find it fair or just at all.

Even our National Allies like Germany didn't spend their fair share to NATO until Russia invaded Ukraine.

I'm tired how American Citizens don't have healthcare or houses yet our taxes goes to across the world, and the world isn't doing their fair share. We aren't being represented by our government.

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> I find it furious how american citizens are force to subsidize the entire world.

Come on: the US is already the wealthiest country, and if you look at the underlying reasons why its citizens get more of the world pie, you can find plenty of reasons the rest of the world is “subsidising” the US. Let’s start with IP rights and the abuse of that system to the detriment of any non-US country. There are plenty of systematic biases in favour of the US, often “negotiated” by the US. The US is happy to destabilise whole countries to get what it wants cheaply e.g. oil.

And we are talking about healthcare here, where plenty of other countries seem to have found systems that work better than the US for cheaper.

While I agree with the general premise that the rest of the world subsidizes the US to a degree, I don't think IP is an example of that. Countries are perfectly capable of saying no to US IP laws, but they don't because the trade that comes with saying yes is well worth it to them.

Where the US gets subsidized is our currency. The dollar, for the last 50 years, has been such a stable and useful tool for trade, that demand for it allows the US to run and import/export deficit via its printing. Foreign labor is cheap in dollar denominated terms, which allows US citizens to trade their own labor for several times what it is worth.

I think this is a lesson every US citizen should pay attention to when they advocate radical change: a big part of your lifestyle is paid for by stability.

> but they don't because the trade that comes with saying yes is well worth it to them

Negotiating to give our products/services to the US, in an asymmetric bargaining position.

I am quite the supporter of market driven economies, and I realise how much we gain, but please don’t ignore that the US very strongly negotiates to its own benefit and that small countries have relatively little leverage.

I get your points. The US isn't wealthy. US oligarchs, corporations, and politicians are wealthy.

Most people in the USA do not have the time or energy to care about IP rights in other countries. Most americans don't want war, it's pushed heavily by pundits.

As for my points about healthcare, I still think medical costs are subsidized by the USA for the world and mainly research costs. The vox article does a good job explaining that.

American citizens are not "forced". American citizens vote for politicians that want private healthcare. If you want your own national drug care program, that gives the government an incentive to negotiate large purchases with pharmaceutical companies. Then do it. But you keep electing politicians that choose the free market

Policies like 2 senators per state, regardless of population, and the Electoral College ensure that a minority of citizens have the majority of power in the USA.

Two wolves and a sheep sit down to decide what to have for dinner…

>But you keep electing politicians that choose the free market

Ba ha ha ha ha. Let me tell you how 'free' the market is if I decide to open up Notch's Medical Clinic without a long list of licenses/permits/regulatory compliance. If I manufacture and give you a pill without extensive process of authorization by the FDA to use this pill as a drug. Healthcare is expensive in part because there isn't a free market.

A free market would rip the bloated competition currently present into shreds.

> I'm tired how American Citizens don't have healthcare or houses yet our taxes goes to across the world, and the world isn't doing their fair share.

This naively assumes that US spending on its military is some sort of charity, and not something that the US does entirely to further its own aims. A stable global stage does benefit other countries, but it also massively benefits the US. The same applies to the things like US CDC's global disease surveillance programs - famously trimmed back in China a couple years before we had a pandemic that these very programs might've been able to contain.

Are American insulin prices really subsidizing insulin prices for n other countries? Hasn't it been known for long enough that it is not so encumbered with ip problems that might be present for recently developed drugs?

There appears to be a general MO of drug companies.

Make the bulk of your profits in the US market, and subsistence elsewhere.

I am not saying there are not other associated "Medical Industry" problems (lack of pricing transparency, 3rd party billing, EMTALA, EMR/NonClinical time for Doctors, Certificates of Need, disincentives for Cash payment) but this is a big one.

Also, many countries appear to have weaponized their IP in order to force drug company massive discounts.

As much as US Taxpayer $ goes towards much of the industry I am now in favor of outright nationalization for the established bigPharma. Let cutting edge biotech / lab space stay private, and BigPharma go nationalized.

At least maybe then we'll not be paying the world's bills.

> I find it furious how american citizens are force to subsidize the entire world

If I buy a car for 10x what it's worth, it's not because I'm subsidizing other buyers - it's because I got ripped off.

We have a strong right-wing that will shoot down any attempts at fixing our medical system. The problems we have have absolutely nothing to do with NATO obligations or foreign aid, it has to do with the fact that the scare from Reagan's Welfare Queen and Free-Market ideology has taken hold of medical discussions.

dems had control of all 3 branches of gov and didn’t do shit

For like 3 months they had control with the slimmest of majorities.

I think we need to disambiguate between the Left-Wing, Right-Wing, the UniParty, and some reformers.

The UniParty, which contains the Establishment of both the Left-Wing and the Right-Wing, is adverse to any changes of status quo.

Both the Populist Right, and the Progressive Left are strongly in favor of reform of the system as we know it. Some Reformers like the Libertarian Right and Libertarian left may be in favor of status quo in this instance though.

But, when someone says

> For like 3 months they had control with the slimmest of majorities.

What really should have been said was

> For like 3 months the Establishment Left-Wing had control with the slimmest of majorities, but the UniParty be controlling shiz since forever.

The US cannot remain the World's Piggie Bank when it comes to Medical Profits.

But price regulation is socialism. ;)

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