How does Canada rank in medical innovation? Serious question.
When I’ve done some light research on this issue, I don’t recall a significant number of the more notable breakthroughs coming from Canada. (I’m sure some Canucks will pop in to set me straight.) Most come from the U.S. and England, with some from France. But, regardless of where they’re developed, the overpriced American market will provide the lion’s share of profit and profit motive.
Most innovations start out priced out of the reach of the non-rich. Then prices fall as manufacturing is standardized and economies of scale kick in. I remember when LASIC surgery first came out and it was 5000 dollars per eye. Now it is about a third of that.
One side benefit of more government involvement in healthcare is that one of the primary drivers of the cost of prescription drugs is the FDA. If the government has to pay more of the bills for prescription drugs it may take a look at all the wasteful spending and deadly time delays it takes to get FDA approval for drugs.
While not guaranteed, innovation sells. I am not an economist/businessman/investment banker/person with specialized knowledge in this area, but I wouldn’t think it would be stifled to any great degree.
Minoxidil (Rogaine) was originally developed as an anti-hypertension drug (and apparently actually made it to market as such).
For the sake of argument, I will assume this is absolutely true.
I want UHC and price controls in the US. I’m sick of being the world’s Sugar Daddy, footing the bill for all the innovation, while everyone else gets cheap health care and innovations paid with MY money. Give me price controls comparable to those of the rest of the industrialized world. When Big Pharma squawks about how little they make, all of the countries can pitch in to help fund their research, or collectively tell them to piss off.
Frankly, I’m amazed that the Republicans haven’t gotten on board with this thought process. We have entire continents filled with Socialists mooching off of our high cost health care, and the Reps specifically want that to continue.
I thought we did parody in the pit?
Isn’t that awfully short-sighted?
A medical innovation I can’t afford will be affordable for my kids, and might be so ubiquitous that my great-grandchildren are amazed that anyone used to get sick from <whatever>.
I think there’s a big danger that universal health care will do a great job of making existing health-care more affordable at the cost of slowing future advances. There’s a balance to strike between affordable for now and advances for the future. I’m not convinced that the current system does a great job striking that balance, but it concerns me that many people seem to think that reducing medical industry profits won’t have any effect on medical R&D.
England, eh? They have a UHC system far heavier than Canada’s, so I guess it does not stifle innovation.
There’s not nearly enough information to make that claim. I don’t think anyone is claiming that health care innovation will completely cease under UHC. So the fact that there is some doesn’t disprove any real claim made by opponents of UHC.
To find that out how UHC impacts health technology innovation, we’d have to do some complicated studies with statistics and models, and while there plenty of such studies, it’s hard to figure out how much they are influenced by the ideology of the funding source.
Also, as was pointed out by the poster you responded to, British companies can sell their drugs for high profits in the US. So we have to consider how the global market will respond. It’s no good to point to drug producers in the UK who continue to innovate despite UHC there if they’re actually making profits in the US, and would have to severely restrict future R&D if we changed our system.
I’m not saying it’s fair that the US provides the bulk of health care profits and drives innovation. But we should know what we’re giving up if we choose not to do it.
Am I missing something? Is this thread using “UHC”–universal health care–to refer to the mandate for purchasing private health insurance?
It seems to be imagining an America where health care costs are much lower under some kind of UHC scheme like single payer (Canada) or mandatory private insurance that is highly regulated.
Drug and device development (and procedure development to some extent) continues via a profit motive as long as there is one giant economy where you can profit from your discoveries (magnified by ability to market to consumers). All other countries individually can win in a take-it-or-leave-it game with the drug and device companies as long as they are offering a price over the marginal cost of production.
I don’t think it will affect innovation as a lot of the extra that Americans spend doesn’t directly go to pharma or research. A lot of the money spent on “healthcare” is actually:
[ul]
[li] Insurance company profits[/li][li] Admin costs[/li][li] Unnecessary diagnostics* [/li][li] Excessive salaries for healthcare professionals[/li][/ul]
- “Unnecessary diagnostics” is a controversial one for my list. Why not scan everyone for everything and so what if 99.99% of scans are clear – that’s 0.01% of the population in which you’ve diagnosed something early?
The problem comes in that in practice, nothing like 99.99% of scans are clear. You get many false positives and many "that looks weird"s. So often what follows for a large proportion of patients is another wave of tests or treatments for something that was never going to be symptomatic; all at great cost temporally and financially.
Of course there is a balance to be struck, but it doesn’t look like the US has the right balance here (example).
Are you seriously claiming that Canadians don’t contribute to medical research and innovation?
American’s are doing the heavy lifting? You’re funny!
There is at least a plausible argument that Americans overpaying for medical services serves as a significant profit driver for medical companies from around the world. Patients from other countries, who pay much less, generate revenues in excess of variable cost, but may not generate enough revenue to justify the high cost of research.
Note, it’s merely a plausible argument, I’ve never seen actual data to support it, but it is not inherently illogical.
Here you go.. In addition, much of the innovation which does happen is not coming from the big companies, but from start-ups which the big companies buy when their drugs pan out.
No one is talking about removing all profits. Downward pricing pressure leads to more innovation than monopoly positions. Just look at the computer industry. Right now there is more incentive to develop expensive drugs which will be paid for by insurance than to develop more cost effective solutions.
Hospitals, which are under cost pressure from insurers, are doing much better, with less intrusive operations which allow patients to leave more quickly.
It’s less about where the innovation is done and more about the expensive U.S. consumer model that provides the lion’s share of profit motive. A primary goal of UHC would be to rein those expenses in.
Will Universal Health Care stifle innovation?
The title doesn’t specifically say what kind of innovation, so I presume it means inventions of new medicines, medical devices, and medical procedures.
This presumes that the only motive or vehicle for innovation is money. People have produced a variety of medical innovations that did not seem to be motivated by money and did not require enormous amounts of it.
Penicillin - The grand daddy of all pharmaceutical drugs. Discovered by Alexander Fleming in a modest hospital laboratory, he did not patent it because he wanted it available to everyone.
Polio vaccine - Discovered by Jonas Salk at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. It was a well-funded project, but the funds came from a non-profit organization that we now know as the March of Dimes. Salk refused to patent it because he wanted it available to everyone.
Insulin - Discovered by Frederick Banting and Charles Best (Canadians, by the way) in a small laboratory at the University of Toronto. They assigned the patents to the University of Toronto because they wanted it available to everyone.
Now, these are three of the most significant medical “innovations” in history. All devoid of a profit motive or elaborate, expensive research laboratories.
I ran across at least one mention that in Great Britain in the 1940s, patenting medicine was considered unethical.
I’m old enough to remember when another term for prescription drugs was “ethical pharmaceuticals”. I like that term because of its connotations. But I haven’t heard it used in many years. Even a doctor friend of mine is unfamiliar with it.
This behavior is evident in other fields, as well:
Einstein’s E=MC^2 did not result from the promise of wealth from nuclear devices.
The SendMail software that powers much of the world’s internet email systems was invented by Eric Allman. He says he invented it because he wanted the email concept to be successful and to be successful it had to be perfectly reliable. So he invented that reliable program and gave it away.
However, the pharmaceutical industry has been innovative. They have found:
- Innovative ways to extend the patent of an existing drug by changing the formula by the slightest amount possible.
- Innovative ways to market new drugs that are no more, or even less effective than existing drugs.
- Innovative ways to maintain an exorbitant pricing structure by lobbying the government.
- Innovative ways to reclassify common life experiences as illnesses requiring medication.
So, I would say, no, UHC will not stifle innovation.
I will go even further and propose that excessive focus on profit stifles innovation.
The OP in no way presumes that money is the only motivator, but that it is A motivator. It would have to be because new drugs cost more than a billion dollars each to bring to market. Modern drugs are far more complex than penicillin or polio vaccine. You’re not likely to see a plucky young chemist stumble onto a new HIV antiviral regimen.
The “complexity” of a drug is irrelevant. What matters is its effectiveness.
I don’t think any modern drugs are more effective than penicillin or polio vaccine or insulin.
What this “complexity” accomplishes is inventing new, patentable compounds.
As for your “plucky young chemist” his counterparts have been doing pretty much that very thing throughout history.
For example, a man named Samuel Pierpont Langley received grants from the War Department and the Smithsonian to develop the first heavier-than-air manned aircraft. Seems he was outdone by a couple of brothers working out of a bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio.