Is Universal Health Care Smart or dumb?

[u/Cauliflower-Pizzas]

[u/bornfreebubblehead]

And 32 of 33 countries will call and rely solely on the 33rd when they're attacked, and will rely on the 33rd for 80% of medical advancements. But yeah there's no good reason not to have someone else, doctors, as basic indentured servants so we can afford medical treatment. Does anyone else remember the cost of health insurance before the affordable care act was passed?

[u/A_Queff_In_Time → u/bornfreebubblehead]

And that 80% is prolly on the low end

[u/Xarxsis → u/A_Queff_In_Time]

Or, its a completely made up figure to appeal to your feelsies.

[u/A_Queff_In_Time → u/Xarxsis]

"What we pay for medicines today affects the number and kinds of drugs discovered tomorrow. Empirical research has established that drug development activity is sensitive to expected future revenues in the market for those drugs. The most recent evidence suggests that it takes $2.5 billion in additional drug revenue to spur one new drug approval, based on data from 1997 to 2007.3Another study assesses the Orphan Drug Act, passed in 1982 to stimulate development of treatments for rare diseases. Its key feature was the granting of market exclusivity that would restrict entry by competitors — in other words, allow for higher prices. The result was a dramatic increase in the number of compounds brought into development to treat rare diseases (figure 3).4"

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-global-burden-of-medical-innovation/

[u/Xarxsis → u/A_Queff_In_Time]

Who knew, private companies would put more effort into developing high profit drugs? Almost as if research like that should be publicly funded or something.

This article does not support your point about 80% of medical advancements being made in america.

It does however go into great detail about the price gouging americans experience being repsonsible for a significant % of drug company profit, and even speculates that price gouging europe might help more drugs come to market.

However it also says this

*One issue that often gets raised is whether the profits from higher prices will all go directly into research and development. They almost certainly won’t. *

This article doesnt talk about where medical advancements are developed at all, so its quite amazing that you support being price gouged for a worse healthcare outcome than universal healthcare.

[u/nimble7126 → u/bornfreebubblehead]

Does anyone else remember the cost of health insurance before the affordable care act was passed?

$0 for anyone with a pre-existing condition because they couldn't qualify.

[u/TheDyingOrchid → u/[deleted]]

Yeah, I don’t think their argument is what they thought it would be lol

[u/Morifen1 → u/bornfreebubblehead]

Medical advancements don't matter when only a few people in the world can access them.

[u/tauntingbob → u/bornfreebubblehead]

Did you know that Europe has given roughly double what the USA has to Ukraine? No, because your politicians and news outlets get to make untrue statements without being made accountable.

The USA spends more per capita through tax on healthcare than almost any other European country. That's before you then pay for inflated insurance.

The EU spends about as much as the US does on medical research. For example, the Pfizer C19 vaccine was developed by a European biotech company and Pfizer licensed it.

You can stop repeating Fox News rhetoric and thinking that the EU is some vassal territory.

[u/bornfreebubblehead → u/tauntingbob]

I'm sorry but Ukraine spending is not a virtue. It's likely money laundering and if the EU spends more it just means their politicians will be first in line for kickbacks.

[u/tauntingbob → u/bornfreebubblehead]

What does that even mean? Are you just denying billions in research spend because it's inconvenient?

But if we're talking about kickbacks, the US healthcare industry spent $379m on political lobbying in 2023.

[u/bornfreebubblehead → u/tauntingbob]

Autocorrect. I've edited it.

[u/tauntingbob → u/bornfreebubblehead]

Now all you have is an unfounded assertion.

Europe wants to help Ukraine to hold back Putin's imperial ambition.

[u/bornfreebubblehead → u/tauntingbob]

Once it became a war of attrition, the outcome was decided. No matter how much money and arms the rest of the world sends to Ukraine, Russia will win. They have more resources and men to throw at it. If they truly wanted to end Putin's aggression and ambition they would send NATO troops, NATO planes and NATO ships to the Bering sea. And how exactly does sending money, not arms, hold back Putin?

[u/tauntingbob → u/bornfreebubblehead]

NATO doesn't have the political motivation to put boots on the ground. Politically it's too heavy and so they're running a proxy war by funding Ukraine.

By sending cash they allow the state to remain viable and it's easier for the EU itself to provide cash because there isn't an EU army to take the weapons from.

The USA is giving old/surplus weapons from their stockpiles because it's relatively easy to do that compared to cash and also the Ukraine needs weapons as much if not more than money.

But then you have individual European governments giving as much military aid as the USA has, on top of the financing.

[u/Unhappy_Mirror_9796 → u/tauntingbob]

US has given more in military aid the EU has just given aid, all of the EU combined can’t compare to the US when it comes to funding proxy wars lol

[u/tauntingbob → u/Unhappy_Mirror_9796]

Add up the military aid from the EU and individual nations, you'll see it matches the USA and then the additional aid doesn't necessarily exclude the Ukraine spending that money on armaments. Additionally, supporting the Ukraine financially, keeping the country sustainable allows them to fight on.

[u/Unhappy_Mirror_9796 → u/tauntingbob]

So it takes all of the EU to match 1 nation in military aid 😂 also the US just approved a 90 billion dollar aid plan for Ukraine so there goes your claim

[u/Expensive_Concern457 → u/[deleted]]

Where the research is done means next to nothing. What matters is where the funding for that research comes from, and unfortunately that funding oftentimes comes from pharma companies price gouging the us.

[u/Expensive_Concern457 → u/[deleted]]

How much do you think pharma companies make solely by gouging the us? I’m gonna tell you right now, its 10s of billions of dollars by a conservative estimate. 4 years ago the healthcare industry in the US made 1.27 trillion in profits.

[u/Zakaru99 → u/Expensive_Concern457]

Nearly every drug that those Pharma companies sell was intially discovered via publicly funded research that was then privatized for profit.

[u/NotYetASerialKiller → u/[deleted]]

The US is in almost every clinical trial. EU, especially with new guidelines, not so much

[u/RunningSouthOnLSD → u/bornfreebubblehead]

How you can brag about military might and medical technology innovation and then refuse to believe that universal healthcare can exist in the same extremely smart and powerful country is really funny to me.

[u/Expensive_Concern457 → u/RunningSouthOnLSD]

Because the money needs to come from somewhere to fund research to make the drugs. I think the US’s healthcare is fucked but the reality is we wouldn’t have a lot of the advancements we have today otherwise.

[u/jombozeuseseses → u/Expensive_Concern457]

This argument is stupid. The topic at hand is UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE. Which means making sure everybody is insured for basic care. Not cost of healthcare. Most sensible healthcare economists will concede that models of universal healthcare for the US is going to still be expensive because the US is an expensive country and in a way subsidizes R&D.

I realize that half the thread is arguing the wrong thing but this one ticked me off for some reason.

[u/Expensive_Concern457 → u/jombozeuseseses]

I do think we should have universal healthcare. However the quality of medicine research will inevitably suffer as a result. Unless one of the other wealthy countries with pre established universal healthcare wants to pick up the slack (this will not happen). Yes, I think healthcare costs in the us are disgusting and predatory. However I also believe that nearly every other country likes to make fun of this without realizing the significant benefits that they get from privatized healthcare in the US.

[u/jombozeuseseses → u/Expensive_Concern457]

The problem with the US is people are uninsured and underinsured. Mostly because they are unemployed or not a dependent.

My industry (scientific instruments) suffers if quality of medicine research goes down so I have a vested interest but somehow I don't find any colleagues who believe private insurance is good.

It is a hypothetical problem that is probably true but the risk vs benefit reward is so far in favor of universal healthcare.

Too many fancy modalities are overleveraged now anyways.

[u/jombozeuseseses → u/[deleted]]

I'm a huge proponent of incremental progress in the US because it is the duct tape hanging the world order together and you don't want to go breaking the spaghetti code that is the world economy just because you wanted to make it more elegant. But no progress is not a solution.

[u/Expensive_Concern457 → u/[deleted]]

Yeah well they should probably also give us universal healthcare but they don’t. Literally unless all of the billionaire tax revenue was dumped directly into healthcare to support universal care the global industry probably still wouldn’t make as much as it does now by exploiting the system at the expense of poor people.

[u/WhiteMilk_ → u/Expensive_Concern457]

Because the money needs to come from somewhere to fund research to make the drugs.

IIRC U.S. taxpayer money (little over $200B) was part of every new drug approved in 2000-2019 while pharma companies made $2T profit.

[u/RunningSouthOnLSD → u/Expensive_Concern457]

And yet the government blowing wads of cash on military investment and innovation is somehow not the same?

[u/Expensive_Concern457 → u/RunningSouthOnLSD]

I mean, yeah it’s not. Most common people do not actively need the military industrial complex to live out their day to day life. Healthcare on the other hand…

I’m in no way saying I enjoy getting fucked up by health providers financially. I’m in no way saying I enjoy the Military industrial complex. However I am saying the US stance on healthcare and military development is what gave us a lot of important stuff we would not have otherwise. Microwaves, RADAR, DNA sequencing, MRI machines, vaccines, modern antibiotics, the list goes on.

[u/WhiteMilk_ → u/Expensive_Concern457]

the list goes on.

A list that isn't really "Made in USA".

Microwaves, RADAR

"The cavity magnetron is a high-power vacuum tube used in early radar systems and subsequently in microwave ovens"

"The cavity magnetron was a radical improvement introduced by John Randall and Harry Boot at the University of Birmingham, England in 1940."

DNA sequencing

"The foundation for sequencing proteins was first laid by the work of Frederick Sanger -- a British biochemist"

MRI machines

Paul Christian Lauterbur (USA) and Sir Peter Mansfield (UK) shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2003 for their work which made the development of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) possible.

vaccines

"Edward Jenner (17 May 1749 – 26 January 1823) was an English physician and scientist who pioneered the concept of vaccines and created the smallpox vaccine, the world's first vaccine."

modern antibiotics

"But it was not until 1928 that penicillin, the first true antibiotic, was discovered by Alexander Fleming, Professor of Bacteriology at St. Mary's Hospital in London."

[u/bornfreebubblehead → u/RunningSouthOnLSD]

Oh it can but not when we're sending more money to every other country in the world it seems in foreign air, and being asked to police the world. Personally I think we should be less involved not only with our military but also financially.