Comment by neartheplain
5 years ago
It's easy to talk about this "sacrifice" until you have an American friend or family member with a serious chronic health condition. There's no reason to financially ruin sick people and their caretakers for the benefit of private drug companies.
In any case, the basic research behind >90% of US drug inventions is publicly-funded, with private companies productizing this research and reaping huge profits:
>This report shows that NIH funding contributed to published research associated with every one of the 210 new drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration from 2010–2016. Collectively, this research involved >200,000 years of grant funding totaling more than $100 billion.
Not saying it's right, just that perhaps American people are paying a price to help everyone else - for whatever reason the system ended up in that state.
Expensive treatments only seem bad when they're just about within reach then people pour all their money into it. Normal people just get old and die because there's nothing available to save them at any price.
It's a bit of both in my country with free healthcare because some treatments aren't funded by the government so poor people just die or endure the chronic condition while those who can afford it have the option to pay full price like those unfortunate Americans.