you miss the point entirely. No one is arguing that "throwing money" at research will somehow cause that research to be more effective. However, in the United States, pharmaceutical and medical technology companies have a profit motive. Every other developed country in the world has socialized health care, where pharmaceutical and medical technology companies don't have any profit motive, therefore they don't create new drugs and new technologies. Nearly all innovation in medical and pharmaceutical research comes from the United States.
This is what kills me about Canadian health care. An American company will spend years and billions of dollars developing a new drug with hopes of turning a profit, and some Canadian company will simply reverse engineer the drug, aka pirate it, and sell it in Canada at a vastly reduced price. Then Canadians act all smug and superior as if they simply have cheaper drugs. Yeah, you do, only because its much cheaper to reverse engineer a drug than it is to develop a drug, and your pirating country has no copyright laws to protect the intellectual property of a pharmaceutical company. Canada, in terms of health care, is essentially a parasite of the United States. Of course Canadians pay less per capita on health care than Americans, because AMERICANS ARE ESSENTIALLY SUBSIDIZING CANADIAN HEALTH CARE.
I don't really mind that I am subsidizing your health care, any more than I mind that I am subsidizing your national defense (ever wonder why you don't need a military? no, its not because you're so friendly and everyone loves you. they dont. Its because your next door neighbor/protector has the biggest baddest military in the world) what i do mind is the complete lack of gratefulness for all this subsidizing and the smugness we get from when you act as if you paid for all of this by yourself.
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you miss the point entirely. No one is arguing that "throwing money" at research will somehow cause that research to be more effective. However, in the United States, pharmaceutical and medical technology companies have a profit motive. Every other developed country in the world has socialized health care, where pharmaceutical and medical technology companies don't have any profit motive, therefore they don't create new drugs and new technologies. Nearly all innovation in medical and pharmaceutical research comes from the United States.
This is what kills me about Canadian health care. An American company will spend years and billions of dollars developing a new drug with hopes of turning a profit, and some Canadian company will simply reverse engineer the drug, aka pirate it, and sell it in Canada at a vastly reduced price. Then Canadians act all smug and superior as if they simply have cheaper drugs. Yeah, you do, only because its much cheaper to reverse engineer a drug than it is to develop a drug, and your pirating country has no copyright laws to protect the intellectual property of a pharmaceutical company. Canada, in terms of health care, is essentially a parasite of the United States. Of course Canadians pay less per capita on health care than Americans, because AMERICANS ARE ESSENTIALLY SUBSIDIZING CANADIAN HEALTH CARE.
I don't really mind that I am subsidizing your health care, any more than I mind that I am subsidizing your national defense (ever wonder why you don't need a military? no, its not because you're so friendly and everyone loves you. they dont. Its because your next door neighbor/protector has the biggest baddest military in the world) what i do mind is the complete lack of gratefulness for all this subsidizing and the smugness we get from when you act as if you paid for all of this by yourself.
August 14, 2009 - 12:50amThis Comment
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