On Sunday, April 1, 2018 at 5:54:34 AM UTC-6, Gary Harnagel wrote:

One of the problems may be that we as US citizens expect more in healthcare
than the country can afford.

Well, naturally.

Obviously, it is wrong, wicked, and contradictory to all our tenets of morality
and ethics, to stand by while someone is dying when we can save that person's
life. So if we have the technical knowledge to save lives, we must apply it,
though it may cost millions of dollars to save a single life.

Part of the problem, though, is that right now new drugs, for example, are
researched by private enterprise. And so they have to recoup their costs by
charging more than the marginal cost of production of those drugs.

Had the research and development been funded by the taxpayer *in the first
place*, there would be no need to demand high prices of the sick, as the
research would already have been paid for. And surely it's as important to cure
every disease as it was to build the atomic bomb, so how can one object?

If the money came from taxpayer's pockets in the first place, rather than from
private companies whose stockholders could then be pillaged by new legislation,
perhaps the country might confront how much it is willing to pay for health
care? Socialism is less bad when the voters are taxing their own pockets than
when they are robbing someone else and thus destroying incentive.

John Savard