A friend of mine argued the point that a nationalized health care system would end medical advances in the world as we know it. He claims that the only reason medical advances have been as rapid as we have seen in the last 20 years is due to competition and a drive for money. With a nationalized health care system, similar to the one found in Canada, there is no incentive to innovate new techniques and create cures because there is no money to be made in it.
So, is there any proof to back this claim up? Would creating a free system for people to gain access to medical procedures and treatments really stop innovation in the field?
I’m not sure I understand the argument. A national healthcare system doesn’t mean that pharmacutical companies and other for-profit medical research outfits are taken over by the gov’t or anything (and indeed some of the worlds largest pharmacutical manufactuers are from countries with nationalized health care). They would still sell their medical developments for a profit, only the customer would be the government (directly or indirectly, depending on how the healthcare system was set up).
The fact that the government would be able to mass bargin probably would cut into some of the profits of medical tech companies leaving less $$ for R&D, but there would still be large monatary incentives for pharm companies and the like to be the first to develop new drugs.
Incentives aside, money = employees. You can’t subtract one without subtracting the other. And the less money pharmaceutical companies have, the less money they have to offer on the job market, so some number of biochemists will be snatched up by corporations which require a similar skillset but aren’t medical. Agriculture, perhaps.
The overall issue though is less the potential blow to the pharmaceutical market, and more to society at large. If you’re guaranteed to be able to live healthily without needing a job, why get a job? Why work hard? Why try to push the envelope? Of course, this means that people who work regardless pay more taxes to receive the same medical benefits. But if you have a gradated medical system where the more you earn, the better the medical care your receive, then by definition more poor people are going to die at an earlier age than they would have if they could have received in a non-gradated system.
So to what extent should working to support your family and creating something useful for society go into allowing you to do that beyond what others who don’t try to do that, versus how moral it is to let people die for nothing more than being lazy buggers?
What about taking care of your kids? I would bet that more people work harder to make sure that their kids have wide medical options than for getting their kid a Wii.
I suspect there’s a bit of a culture clash here to be honest. Very few people in the UK have to worry about paying for medical care (I guess people who are into cosmetic surgery have to work harder to pay for it) so the US view on such matters seems almost entirely alien.
Or how about the fact that as Europe’s unemployment rate rises, the productivity of it’s workers rises as well? A simple explanation for this is that people who aren’t motivated leave the work force, thus raising the national average. But still the work force has shrunk. Now whether that’s on the whole a positive or a negative, it would be hard to say without doing some math (given as unmotivated people may in fact slow things down.) But even if you are positive at the moment, you still have to ask if that’s something that’s going to remain consistent, or whether it’s the beginning to a snowballing to socialism at which point the economy and innovation stagnates.
Yes, and I have a British friend who has been living off of welfare playing computer games for 3 years. Not having to worry about it exactly my point. Are you sure that in the long run that you’re actually accomplishing something good for humanity by dousing the drive to work hard and innovate?
Cuba may have good health care, but they’ll never progress past the 50’s because there’s no bonus to push the envelope. And passing the 50’s doesn’t just mean that you get a car without wings, it also means that you get modern medical techniques. Yeah, so long as there’s some other guy creating those techniques you can import those into Cuba and then use scare tactics to force that one profession to keep up to date, but that’s not sustainable if the other guy becomes a second Cuba.
Ah, socialism. The swearword of the US right.
Actually socialist countries like Sweden are doing nicely thank you, with a fine quality of life.
As for our wonderful British National Health Service, you seem to think that because my medical treatment is free (thank goodness ), I won’t want or need to work.
How would I buy my house?
How would I eat?
How would I travel?
How would I look after my family?
How would I have my computer?
How would I build up such a good pension that I’m retiring soon?
Yes, but is that for the best? Is that sustainable?
I can take a snapshot of a skydiver with a big smile on his face, but that one snapshot doesn’t tell me anything about whether his shoot will open. That Europeans are happy now is irrelevant.
It’s a mistake to lump Europe together as one entity - each country has it’s own healthcare system, for example. In any case, the sclerosis to which you refer can likely be attributed to the welfare system in the effected countries rather than the healthcare system.
As for the UK, jobs are plentiful if a little unevenly spread around the country - there’s a reason 600,000 Poles have moved here since Poland joined the EU. Personally I think that there are some people who, for the greater good of the economy, should be paid (it’s about 110 dollars a week) to stay at home and not fuck some company’s shit up. An absolute bargain in some cases.
And I’ll just note that I’m not arguing against universal health care. I’m just saying that you probably can’t say anything definitively about whether it works long run until you’ve tried it out for 60 years or so. But that also requires that you have a control group to test against. Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with the US fulfilling that.
Umm…none of this stuff was mentioned in the OP? Do you want to discuss the effect of nationalizing healthcare on possible future medical tech innovation or not?
And you’re aware that the US pays for healthcare for the poor too, right?
Well next year is the 60th anniversary of the founding of the NHS, so perhaps we can revisit the topic then, and leave this thread for discussing the issues actually raised in the OP?
The one thing the Cuban Communist regime seems to have done well is health care. Cuba has the best medical schools in the region – they worked out a deal with Venezuela, not long ago, whereby Venezuela provides Cuba with oil and Cuba provides Venezuela with doctors. They also have a pharmaceutical industry that actually does original research. They did this not by expecting the health sector to operate profitably, but by subsidizing it; in essence, other productive sectors of the economy bear the cost.
Aside, I read that Cuba’s health care system is a sham - it’s effectively split into two separate health case systems, one for the ordinary man, the other for the high ranking communists and health case tourists.
Why would it? Why would giving people free access to medical care have any effect on drugs research?
Most pharm and health strides are achieved in the university setting. Not exactly the hot bed of capitalism.
While it does not sound logical the fact is that money is not the key motivation for work. It is the starting point , but after awhile money fades into the background being replaced by the challenge and interest of the work , the co workers and work environment.
By what measure? You’ve mentioned that it produces a lot of doctors. That doesn’t necessarily mean the ordinary man on the street’s getting the best medical care.
), I won’t want or need to work. 
