The Saga Of Socialized Medicine (Cont'd)
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Monday, October 15, 2007 4:30 PM PT
Health Care: On Monday we reported on the filthy conditions in some British hospitals. Now we hear that some Brits pull their own teeth because they can't find a dentist in that vaunted government system of theirs.
A recent poll found that 35% of Britons say they can't find a National Health Services dentist near their home, 22% claim they don't know how to find a dentist, and 13% are on a waiting list. For 6% of the respondents, self-treatment, including garden-shed extractions, is the alternative.
Meanwhile, in the private U.S. health care system — the one that many want to trade in for the British model — the decline in cancer death rates has accelerated to nearly twice the previous rate.
The "Annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer" released Monday indicates that cancer deaths fell an average of 2.1% a year from 2002 to 2004. From 1993 to 2002, they fell at an annual rate of 1.1%.
Much of the progress was due to the improved treatment of colorectal cancer, the No. 2 killer behind lung cancer. A decade ago, colorectal cancer drug therapy was limited to one effective medicine. Now there are seven on the market that can be combined in cocktails that restrain tumor growth and increase lifespans.
We cheer Dr. John R. Seffrin, chief executive of the American Cancer Society, when he says, "We are truly turning the tide in the cancer battle." But we believe he's way off the mark when he also asserts that the gains "could be even greater if everyone in the U.S. had access to essential health care, including primary care and prevention services."
Were the U.S. to collapse into a British- or Canadian-style socialist system, private-sector incentives to invest in the development of new drugs so instrumental in cutting death rates would be diluted.
For each new drug brought to market, pharmaceutical companies spend $800 million to $1 billion in research and development costs. If they aren't able to recover those costs and make a profit beyond that, they have no reason to innovate.
You don't have to be a member of the vast right-wing conspiracy to realize that America, where health care has yet to be fully seized by the state, provides a rich market for drug makers, and that nations with socialist systems that are funded by taxpayers are poor markets for the industry and thus hurdles to innovation.
The incentive to invest should never be undervalued. A few years ago, the Commerce Department reported that drug price controls in just the largest industrialized nations reduce drug R&D by between $5 billion and $6 billion a year around the world. That means fewer new drugs are produced, which means shorter and more miserable lives for those suffering with disease.
In a sense, Americans subsidize prescription drugs for the rest of the world. Because government-run systems place artificial price ceilings on their products, pharmaceutical companies have to make big money in the U.S. to make up for low profit margins in other nations. Using the power of government to make drug prices more "affordable" in the U.S., a longtime goal of the left, would have devastating effects not only here but across the globe.
"The U.S. is paying the lion's share of R&D," former IBD columnist Merrill Matthews wrote in 2004's "Riding On The Coattails Of U.S. Patients" for the Institute for Policy Innovation.
"That has to change," Matthews wrote. "If other countries want to reinvigorate their R&D sectors, which have been pulling up stakes and moving to the friendlier U.S. economic climate, they have to be willing to relax their price controls and let the prices rise.
"The result is they will be paying a greater share of the R&D, but they will likely also find that innovation-driven companies are willing to settle — or resettle — in those countries, pumping up the economies and creating good jobs."
Canada and the U.K. need the system we have, not vice versa. But they've grown accustomed to their current setups and naively think care is free. Getting them to change would be like pulling teeth.
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