"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
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"J. Clarke" wrote in message
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Hawke wrote:
"J. Clarke" wrote in message
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Hawke wrote:
So would you rather have the government be involved in health
care or just leave it in the hands of people like used car
salesmen? There are private alternatives that are worse than
the government. How about having Bernie Madoff handling your
health care or the management of AIG? Think they would be
better than the government? I don't. The greed of businessmen
is what

False dichtomy and strawman. These are not the only choices.

makes them unacceptable for making decisions on people's health
care. You need people that aren't going to profit from your
health problems making the decisions. Hopefully, medical
professionals without a financial interest would decide what
you need.

Hawke



This is hands-down the low point of this thread. If no one made a
profit in healthcare there would be NO healthcare. Why should
gifted people become doctors, pharma reseachers, nurses, or
pharmacists? Without profit where is the incentive to risk $500M
- $1B *per new drug* on the research side of things. In short,
there would be few or no "medical professionals without a
financial interest [to] decide what you need" without the
opportunity for profit.

I'll take greedy business people over boneheaded collectivist
ideology any day of the week.


Of course you would but that is because of your short sightedness
and adherence to discredited right wing ideology, not because of
the facts. Plenty of organizations and businesses are non profit
and they operate just as efficiently and effectively as the for
profit ones. But how can that be when only profits make a
business work? Or maybe your set in stone beliefs are wrong.

A "non profit" that doesn't run at a profit goes under very
quickly. Calling your surplus of income over expendtures something
other than "profit" doesn't make it any less so.

And how many non-profits have brought new products to market?


Who knows?

Do you know of _any_?

But I do know that bringing new products to the market
isn't only what non-profit businesses do.

Hint--new medications are "new products". If, as you seem to be
admitting, nonprofits do not bring new products to market then who
_will_ create new medications in your workers' paradise?

In fact many of them are
not in business to provide new products at all and have completely
different reasons for being.

That's nice. So where do new meds come from if the pharmaceutical
industry is run as a non-profit?


The federal government pays for between 50 and 70% of all research and
development costs in the pharma industry.

I'd like to see a source for that number. Strange that the Feds will
pay
all that money but not demand that they retain rights to the product
developed--the Feds don't usually work that way.

They don't retain the rights. It's a backhanded way to finance university
medical research; they cut off most federal money, so now the universities
get to keep the licensing fees.

However, as I mentioned, the R&D that Hawke is talking about is *basic*
research, and only a small fraction of the total research costs needed to
get a drug ready for medical use. Most of it -- especially the very
expensive clinical trials -- are paid by the pharma industry.


So there's your answer. It's
paying for most of the research for new drugs right now and that will
continue in the foreseeable future. So there you go. By the way, at
least half of the money spent by pharma goes to advertising not R&D.

So what?

The "half" figure is not accurate, either. It's less than 1/3.

This is a controversial subject and the only way to get a realistic view
of
it is to really dig deep into the facts. The advocates on both sides have
a
very easy time of muddying the waters because the system is very complex.

--
Ed Huntress


Like I said, I'm getting those stats from Ha-Joon Chang, the well noted
economist (Google him if you like). In his book he goes into this. Since
he's an economist and has written a book and mentions this specifically I
think his statistics are probably accurate. He has great credentials. A
Cambridge educated economics professor, with a mentor like Joe Steglitz,
writing on this I think is a pretty reliable source. Of course, you can
disagree with him but I'd like to see the credentials of who you do believe.

Hawke