5 ms·
Price control works in other countries for healthcare.
by StephenAmar 7y ago
Price control works in other countries for healthcare.
- Fjolsvith 7y agoWhich ones and for how long?
- cav71b 7y agoMost European countries for at least 70years
- rayiner 7y agoLargely because the US continues to subsidize medical R&D. Free riding is a good gig if you can get it.
- paulryanrogers 7y agoNow that advertising drugs to the public had ballooned marketing budgets beyond R&D is that still true? I imagine that dollar-for-dollar a non-profit with the right incentives and oversight could out do the VC-backed leeches driving up prescription med prices.
- astazangasta 7y agoThe US subsidizes drug development, that's about all. Other medical R&D doesn't really come out of any publicly funded research system, it comes from medical practitioners. The cost of US drug development subsidy is maybe $40 billion, accounting for basic research and development by pharmaceutical companies. This is pretty much peanuts compared to global healthcare spending. Also, this money is arguably not really that well spent, since most of drug development is useless, and nations can improve their health systems and outcomes much more through things like routine care and monitoring than they will through expensive research.
- michaelmrose 7y agoCan't we keep paying for the R and D and just not let a minority of private actors profit?
- rayiner 7y agoThe private actors are the ones who pay for the R&D, to the tune of $70 billion/year. That's on the same order as total annual venture capital spending nationwide ($70-$80 billion/year from 2014-2017, though 2018 was an outlier at $130 billion). These amounts are small enough where the U.S. government could pretty easily cover the expenditures. So by your logic, why do we need Silicon Valley venture capital? Why not just have the government pay for the R&D and make the results freely available to everyone? Either the government is good at allocating capital for high-tech R&D or its not. Whether you're talking about medical tech or computer tech doesn't make a difference.
- cannonedhamster 7y agoThe vast majority of pure research has funding generated directly from government funds. Medical funding is roughly half from public funds. This wouldn't change with price controls. More profits don't lead to more research.
- RHSeeger 7y agoYou're assuming that the profit on the item is enough that it's still worth it if the price is reduced. Why do you make that assumption?
- cannonedhamster 7y agoMedicine will never not happen. People will continue to get sick. People will continue to become doctors. We've literally seen this before.
- meerita 7y agoPrice control doesn't work on healthcare. I give you an example: Spain, "free" healthcare: they realized people went to socialize to hospitals, making impossible to address the demand. People went to hospitals for headaches, colds, creating an incredible ammount of problems. How they solved it? They charged money (little) for any consult you wanted to do. This reduced instantly a big ammount of the consults and false positives. This was tested in Barcelona and in other provinces. This was also a case for Singapur, where everyone have access to healthcare (starting from 16$/mo) and healthcare is subsidised by demand.