ReasonTV: Lasik for Health Care reform

WOULD OBAMACARE KILL MEDICAL INNOVATION?

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As health care reform inches closer to reality, a massively important question becomes even more pressing: Will ObamaCare kill the sorts of medical innovation that makes the United States the leader in bringing new treatments, technology, and procedures to market?

"America is the only industrialized nation that doesn't have a national health plan," says Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.), former Gov. Howard Dean (D-Vt.), and countless others who want the United States government to guarantee health coverage to all.

Protesters at a recent rally in downtown Los Angeles demanded universal coverage. They told Reason.tv that America is a cruel land where profits come before people.

"It's disgusting!" said one woman. "There should be no profits in health care!" What about those who argue that profits drive medical innovation? "I think that's kind of sick," declared another protester, who wants the U.S. to be more like Canada, where government policy keeps drug prices, and drug company profits, lower than in America.

Many regard the profit motive as cruel, but might it actually produce compassionate results? After all, America has generated vastly more medical innovations than other nations. Included in the long list is the innovation that saved the life of Dave Christensen, construction supervisor, husband, and father. After being diagnosed with cancer, Christensen was lucky enough to be given a then-experimental drug that probably wouldn't have been developed or brought to market in any other country in the world.

If America follows the lead of the rest of the world and clamps down on profits in health care, who will make tomorrow's wonder drugs?

"Drug companies that take big risks may make big profits," says Reason.tv's Nick Gillespie, who hosts the video. "But I say, Good for them. If they're saving lives, I hope they make a killing."

 

Too bad we're currently on a path such that most of the people in the US won't be able to afford any of the new drugs being discovered. The current system just has the US public subsidizing drugs for the rest of the world. Funny that people try to argue that this is a good system.

 

Yup, Obamacare is evil.

 

LMAO @ discovering "new drugs" = success

 

Chemo pills and AIDS medicines are funny aren't they?

LMAO @ Socialists.

 

Yeah, how many of those medicines discovered cure teen angst and give guys boners as opposed to curing or treating life threatening diseases?

You forgot your link, ROOKIE.

 

Once again the deplorable physicians of this country are putting profit over the lives of citizens dying in the street. Health care is a right... funny, I don't see "monetary compensation" anywhere in the Constitution. And if there's one thing I know, it's compensation.

Hippocratic Oath? More like hypocritic oath.

Doctors, tonight's Worst Person in the Worrrrrrrld!!!!!

 

Regardless of the other reasons why your argument is faulty, it should be noted that the vast majority of pharmaceuticals are American corporations.

Of the top 40 pharmaceuticals in the world, 19 are American, including #1 Pfizer, #2 J&J, #9 Abbott Labs and #10 Merck and Co.

For those who are curious, 6 are Japanese.

It would seem that there is less of a correlation between national health care and discoveries as there would be between the number of companies attempting to make discoveries and the discoveries made...which just makes logical sense.

Besides which, the profit margin that pharmaceuticals make is more then enough incentive to keep on spurring research. Consistent double-digit profit margins? Everyone's on that, even if it gets reduced to a more realistic number. Hell, people still want to fight fractions of a percent for things like the airline industry.

 

And before you claim that national health care somehow makes companies less efficient or that companies will somehow be dissuaded from innovation...most of Big Pharma is here to stay. Seriously, what are they going to do, pull a reverse Fido and start selling tires? Also, using your methodology of blatantly r****ded science, one can easily make the claim that Japanese pharmaceuticals are actually more efficient then American corporations...and as such, national health care plans INCREASE efficiency. Of course, that's drawing faint links all over the board and being selective with our evidence, but hey, blatantly r****ded science.

 

This is terrible analysis. First of all, the incentive for new drugs is not going to go away. Second, I bet that graphy wouldn't look so good if you did it per-capita. We'd probably be lagging.

Just a joke of an analysis.

Innovation? You want innovation? Do you know that Republicans have cut research grants to the university system by 3% in 2008. Obama wants to increase it.

So don't drag this pitiful argument into the mix. It's a lie. And you are trying to show Republicans are pro-research when they are not.

 

Personally, I liked the university. They gave us money and facilities, we didn't have to produce anything! You've never been out of college! You don't know what it's like out there! I've worked in the private sector. They expect results.

 

I think the lasik model might work for a lot of things in medicine but it won't work for emergency medicine or anything more complicated than ACL surgery. I think figuring out a way to get more competition along the lines of getting routine procedures would be good along with getting some form of universal coverage to handle emergencies and more complicated procedures.

This doesn't have to be an either or situation.

 

Nice..

Seriously though the problem with cutting government funded research is that it cuts back a lot of basic science which might not be picked up by corporations looking to create a marketable product. A lot of basic science's application might not be immediately obvious but it might help with things farther down the line. For instance finding the structure of DNA there wasn't an immediate application for it but most of the genetic revolution would be impossible without that.

 

Found this recently: http://www.pricedoc.com/