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[Jreengus]

No. Insurance companies pay for the drugs, not the R&D. The company sells them at a higher rate in the USA than in Britain.

Britain's public health care system subsidizes the cost of the drugs, and the amount they're willing to pay is determined by the government. The company selling the drug must either agree to accept that much or the government won't pay for it. This forces the company to negotiate lower returns on their product than in the USA, where multiple buyers and consumers accustomed to paying high rates for pharmaceuticals mean they can charge higher amounts for their product.

Capitalism at work!

So we get drugs cheaper due to our non-capitalist system?

Works for me.

They still have high enough prices to make a profit, clearly (or they wouldn't sell drugs here at all) so what's the problem?  In any case, Britain has a fine R&D section for drugs.

England certainly has some R&D for drugs, there's a company in my very town. My A-level chemistry class went there for a trip. From what I saw people don't work in drugs R&D for the paycheck at all.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

They work there for the dry ice. That stuff is brilliant and I swear they spent most of the time we were there mucking about with it.

[Leafsnail]

Wait, it was exactly the same when I went to the laboratory in my area!

Hmm.

[Jimmy]

Actually, they don't do it for the dry ice either.

They do it for free samples of experimental compounds.

[Jreengus]

I think we're onto something. Here's what we do, cut all funding to R&D departments and instead spend about half as much on dry ice which we give to them. I predict an increase of over 9000% in productivity.

[DJ]

Yes, but it did have everything to do with their economic and political system, of which the research and development of weapons was a part.

USSR would've lost the Cold War no matter what political or economical system they used. USA was simply too big an economic powerhouse to keep up with.

[ed boy]

Dry Ice? It's all about liquid nitrogen!

[Virex]

AFAIK Soviet Union wasn't exactly far behind USA in the technological arms race of Cold War, and their R&D was done by government institutions and universities.

Depends on the department. They had amazing metallurgists, rocket scientists (they build a friggin turbo for a rocket engine! of course after that everyone copied them) and Microbiological researchers (Instead of antibiotics they used viruses that killed bacteria to cure people), but they were generally miles behind when it came to electronics (MiG's used to have cathode ray tubes instead of chips until at least late in the seventies if not the eighties)

[Josephus]

AFAIK Soviet Union wasn't exactly far behind USA in the technological arms race of Cold War, and their R&D was done by government institutions and universities.

Depends on the department. They had amazing metallurgists, rocket scientists (they build a friggin turbo for a rocket engine!) and Microbiological researchers (Instead of antibiotics they used viruses that killed bacteria to cure people), but they were generally miles behind when it came to electronics (MiG's used to have cathode ray tubes instead of chips until at least late in the seventies if not the eighties)

Apparently (and I'm unsure if this is true) MiG's were built with cathode ray tubes because microchips are vulnerable to the EMP that would be set off by a nuclear blast.

[kuro_suna]

Depends on the department. They had amazing metallurgists, rocket scientists (they build a friggin turbo for a rocket engine! of course after that everyone copied them)

Turbo pumps were first developed as part of the V-2, every space program today is using a scaled up version of something the Nazi's built over 60 years ago.

EDIT:
The Russians captured most of the V-2 technology but the Americans got the lead scientist Wernher von Braun who later worked on the Apollo program.

[Muz]

should drug companies be allowed to advertise on TV? and who should have the power to decide what drugs you need, a train professional called a doctor, or the patient/customer/egit who gets health advice from forwarded e-mails?

Fixed that for you.

[Nikov]

Doublepost:
Quote from: Aqizzar on July 01, 2010, 06:38:42 pm
but after getting slapped with a six figure bill you'll probably be paying for it the rest of your life.

A life you wouldn't have had without the service. And six figures? Uninsured childbirth came up to a whopping three grand. My daughter, with all of her complications, cost a little more than my '97 Blazer, but I'd say that's a fair price for a child who would have died and possibly a dead wife as well.

The six figures was referring to the rough average of healthcare costs of a serious car crash, or really any major accident.  I know you could respond with, "Well, then you can sue the person at fault."  If you're any kind of honest about the real world, I'll trust you not to make such a whimsically myopic statement.  I have a little more faith in you than that.

But the real point I want to throw in is, saying "any cost is better than dead, so take your giant bill and be happy about it" is a really crappy argument.  Just because I don't live in the Kalahari doesn't mean I'm not entitled to complain about the heat where I am.

1. You can sue the person at fault for major accidents. And if its your own fault, you pay the bill yourself.
2. If you don't think working the rest of your life to pay for the rest of your life is worthwhile, you probably should be dead already.

[DJ]

There's a world of difference between working for yourself and being a virtual slave.

[Nikov]

There's a world of difference between working for yourself and being a virtual slave.

An excellent point for the free market over centralized planning, thank you.

[DJ]

The one good thing about communist countries is that they ban irrelevant snarky comments.

[fenrif]

Doublepost:
Quote from: Aqizzar on July 01, 2010, 06:38:42 pm
but after getting slapped with a six figure bill you'll probably be paying for it the rest of your life.

A life you wouldn't have had without the service. And six figures? Uninsured childbirth came up to a whopping three grand. My daughter, with all of her complications, cost a little more than my '97 Blazer, but I'd say that's a fair price for a child who would have died and possibly a dead wife as well.

The six figures was referring to the rough average of healthcare costs of a serious car crash, or really any major accident.  I know you could respond with, "Well, then you can sue the person at fault."  If you're any kind of honest about the real world, I'll trust you not to make such a whimsically myopic statement.  I have a little more faith in you than that.

But the real point I want to throw in is, saying "any cost is better than dead, so take your giant bill and be happy about it" is a really crappy argument.  Just because I don't live in the Kalahari doesn't mean I'm not entitled to complain about the heat where I am.

1. You can sue the person at fault for major accidents. And if its your own fault, you pay the bill yourself.
2. If you don't think working the rest of your life to pay for the rest of your life is worthwhile, you probably should be dead already.

If you think working all your life so you can work all your life is worthwhile you're dead allready.