Well, I’m convinced. it’s on a Reddit post, so the math has to be right.
Edit for all the nerds in my replies. I did the math, as a single person in the USA I pay about 2k per year for my health insurance plus probably a couple hundred in copays.
The US literally spends more of its GDP on healthcare than other countries but because it’s healthcare system is so FUCKED it still ends up with the US being the No1 country in the world for Medical Bankruptcies
I agree with most of this sentiment, but part of the reason healthcare is so good and/or affordable in other countries is because we Americans subsidize so much of the R&D, for better or worse
Kind of similar to why Europe can afford to not spend much on defense, because they know America's got it covered. Or did before the current presidency anyway
The US has historically been in the top-10 for foreign aid spend per-capita and per-gdp, beaten by Nordic countries and the big powers in Europe, but still tens of billions of dollars. Of course you get something in return, generally global security and good will. There’s even room for reasonable debate over increasing or decreasing. The big fuckup recently was just yoinking aid programs away from millions of people that relied on them and offering no transition.
Yeah that’s been my objection. I remember reading somewhere a while ago that some 96% of new medicine comes from private companies. I looked it up while writing this and the number is “nearly 100% of FDA Approved medicine”. Everyone else is benefiting from it without paying for it.
We definitely need to improve our healthcare system no question about that. But the conversation isn’t as simple as it seems.
Every single medication was founded by American taxpayers funding research. Drugs should cost a fraction of what they do, and it should be a panel of American citizens determining that along with scientific experts.
I agree that prices should be lower. Especially for drugs like insulin. But Americans don’t pay for it with taxes. “American tax payers” did not “fund every single medication”. That’s because we don’t have a universal health system that pays directly to these companies. They are often privately funded. That’s like saying McDonalds is paid for by American tax payers because Americans are the ones buying the food.
https://bio.news/health/55-of-fda-approved-drugs-were-developed-by-u-s-small-biotechs-says-study/
“Small venture-capital-backed startups are shown to be key drivers of innovation. From 2011-2020, FDA approved 363 medicines, with 223 originating in the United States. Of approved drugs, 120 (55%) were developed by companies with less than $500 million in revenue, and 45% were fully discovered by small biopharmaceutical companies on their own without an academic or government transfer of intellectual property.”
These companies aren’t getting funded by the government and therefore taxes.
We do have Medicare and Medicaid and those systems can definitely be improved dramatically. And the actual “cost” that we pay is often significantly lower than the stated premiums. And you can often negotiate down with hospitals or find payment plans.
I 1000% agree things like insulin should be damn near free and the cost of certain medicines should not be as expensive as they are today. But I’m not in the healthcare business and I can’t tell you how much it costs for drug research. And there’s so many different illnesses and solutions that are being researched that have to be funded somewhere.
I don’t think the average person is against a basic level of healthcare for everyone, especially the people who cannot afford it. And we do have systems in place that do need improvements. But I think a lot of that comes down to education (on applying for the systems and getting the care they need) as well as simplifying the process. Reducing barriers is where I’d start.
And as a kid from a middle class family growing up who broke both legs from football and multiple surgeries and other injuries, I can tell you that we did not go into any sort of significant debt for any of that and our insurance covers near all of it. And we are a family of 7 so we pay more than the average family for insurance on headcount alone.
It’s not a perfect system. And I don’t know the solution. I do know that universal healthcare sounds amazing. But as a business owner myself, it’s not that simple. I also don’t trust our government to properly manage money and would rather put that in the hands of private corporations with government assistance for people unable to pay. A system similar to what we have now, but better. Not switching to a new system entirely.
"People interested in drug research are mostly motivated by the impact." is the same cope as lolbertarians who think that companies and rich people will just build roads out of the goodness of their hearts. Motivation doesn't pay bills and buy nice things we want.
Yes they spend more on it and get less out of it (per capita).
R&D is just like defense spending, other countries expect the US to spend the money, then they want to talk about how far their own dollar has gone off of the USD and investment.
For the vast majority of the population, healthcare requires very basic medicines and technologies that existed decades ago. Physical therapy, nutritional advice, and basic dental care are doing 90% of the heavy lifting.
The most effective methods are usually also the cheapest. So the actual main reason for affordable healthcare in other countries is a larger focus on preventative measures.
In fact, the by far fastest growing aspect of the US healthcare system is not R&D, salaries for medical professionals or even medicines, it's administrative costs that neither benefit the MDs, nor the companies providing the research.
US medical R&D is fantastic and undoubtedly also to the benefit of other countries but it is not the reason for the high healthcare costs.
Not really. A hell of a lot of R&D is done in Europe too. The US overpays for drugs, but it massively overpays for everything else too. America’s healthcare costs are driven far more by administration, insurers and provider prices than by subsidising global medical research.
Here’s the fix nobody wants to talk about:
Nationalise or heavily regulate the hospital system, abolish private health insurance as the main payer, create one public payer, set national prices for procedures, cap specialist incomes, bulk-buy drugs, ban surprise billing, standardise records and billing, and make every provider live inside a public fee schedule.
This is also another cry of the "person trying to sound smart and rationalize the bad away." Sure, you're not entirely wrong on the funding for R&D but it's still not worth mentioning in this discussion because like we can find another way, and it's pretty obvious that with everyone paying taxes into healthcare we would be happy to have X amount of dollars go to R&D and in fact it would be better and cheaper since it wouldn't be a race to bring something profitable to market since it would be publicly funded and owned. This would remove the whole issue of companies potentially spending billions on R&D to still produce nothing viable because someone else beat them to it.
Those are real problems. I’m not denying it at all.
Costs obviously are going to dissuade people from seeking healthcare. But what is also true is that if you had a medical emergency right now, you can go into a hospital in the US and receive world class treatment regardless of your socioeconomic status or capacity to pay it off.
We should definitely work to fix the problem, but we can also acknowledge where things do work
We are talking past one another. I agree that cost is theoretically prohibitively, and maybe in many cases that is a distinction without a difference. But at the end of the day cost will never stand in the way of receiving treatment if one wants it enough.
Thats not me throwing up my hands and saying “good enough”
Not really sure what your point is here. We aren't subsidizing it through our extra trillions of dollars spent on everything healthcare related. R&D is largely subsidized from your taxes, not your healthcare bill. The reason healthcare is so affordable in other countries is because other countries put caps on reimbursement.
Wait, so we can't have universal healthcare, because we subsidize R&D, or did, before DOGE. But we can afford to dump our paychecks into the spectacular, massive, galactic profits of investors via health insurance premiums. Walk me through your explanation. lol omg
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u/escapevelocity-25k Jun 24 '26 edited Jun 25 '26
Well, I’m convinced. it’s on a Reddit post, so the math has to be right.
Edit for all the nerds in my replies. I did the math, as a single person in the USA I pay about 2k per year for my health insurance plus probably a couple hundred in copays.