You've probably seen the town hall meetings where people act like an angry mob and berate some Congressperson or other for supporting health care reform. They've got it all wrong, of course. They are under the delusion that our current private insurance system doesn't involve rationing, that Big Insurance pays for care rather than make huge profits out of denying care and that it doesn't benefit from any government subsidies, or that Big Pharma spends huge amounts of its income on developing helpful new drugs without government subsidies just so that America can enjoy superior health care to the rest of the world. All wrong, since the system works now to siphon profits out to the top and not to develop innovative ways to take care of sick people and since we pay much more for inferior care compared to most of Europe and Canada.
See below a link to a very good posting on the issue of whether helpful R&D done by Big Pharm would curdle and die if we had a national single payer insurance plan that cut back on Big Pharm's ability to charge life-shattering prices for the drugs it develops. I particularly like the notice that most of the hype about Big Pharm's R&D is just that. American Universities are the heart of basic research, and Big Pharm has made millions out of others' research--i.e., through government subsidies both on the research end (university research funded by NIH) and on the sales end (patents on products and mimicking products that let drug companies squeeze exorbitant profits over long terms).
The Hunting of the Snark,Innovation, Aug. 14, 2009. (Hat Tip--Ken at Angry Bear)
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