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Of course 'health care' is a good thing, that's a fairly meaningless platitude. This particular implementation being good or bad has yet to be determined. I p

Of course 'health care' is a good thing, that's a fairly meaningless platitude. This particular implementation being good or bad has yet to be determined. I personally don't find the ACA to be a 'good' system, but I wish they would just shut up and let it succeed or fail in production. Also, a large part of why you have cheap healthcare and access to lots of drugs because we paid the cost to research and make them. With the ACA, a lot of that (potentially) goes away, though from the look of the early prices it seems the cost of healthcare has gone up for most, and near free for some, meaning the healthcare industry still gets massive profits. I'm wondering if it was good for the rest of the world to have our healthcare system be so expensive. Hopefully not, I'm pretty tired of being terrified of becoming sick enough to need medical care.

Mikeb85 13y ago
> Also, a large part of why you have cheap healthcare and access to lots of drugs because we paid the cost to research and make them. Not entirely sure about that. It seems like many (most?) of the 'important' drugs worldwide were either developed by educational institutions or laboratories (some belonging to corporations) from a wide variety of countries, not just the US.
- cobrausn 13y ago
  The only reason it is currently profitable to make drugs at all (and the reason we've seen research in so many) is that US consumers will buy them at market rate with IP protection, i.e., too expensive for most places. If we didn't exist as that profit center, many would not have been put through clinical trials and brought to market. http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2012/02/10/the-truly-staggering-cost-of-inventing-new-drugs/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2012/02/10/the-tru...
  - smtddr 13y ago
    I'm scared to get into healthcare debate, but I will say that while I understand the importance of clinical trials, if there wasn't any.... then the drugs would just be brought to market regardless even if it means people die. In Nigeria; even just in ChinaTown San Francisco, you can get some questionable origins drugs. But indeed, all bets are off when you take that stuff. Maybe it'll work, maybe it won't, maybe DOOM! Not saying this is a good thing, but the drug market would continue without USA, IMHO.

Mikeb85 13y ago

> Also, a large part of why you have cheap healthcare and access to lots of drugs because we paid the cost to research and make them. Not entirely sure about that. It seems like many (most?) of the 'important' drugs worldwide were either developed by educational institutions or laboratories (some belonging to corporations) from a wide variety of countries, not just the US.

cobrausn 13y ago
The only reason it is currently profitable to make drugs at all (and the reason we've seen research in so many) is that US consumers will buy them at market rate with IP protection, i.e., too expensive for most places. If we didn't exist as that profit center, many would not have been put through clinical trials and brought to market. http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2012/02/10/the-truly-staggering-cost-of-inventing-new-drugs/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2012/02/10/the-tru...
- smtddr 13y ago
  I'm scared to get into healthcare debate, but I will say that while I understand the importance of clinical trials, if there wasn't any.... then the drugs would just be brought to market regardless even if it means people die. In Nigeria; even just in ChinaTown San Francisco, you can get some questionable origins drugs. But indeed, all bets are off when you take that stuff. Maybe it'll work, maybe it won't, maybe DOOM! Not saying this is a good thing, but the drug market would continue without USA, IMHO.