There was and is competition from Walmart. Many Walmarts are NOT in small towns, and even the ones that are typically would face some level of competition.
And they took over a big part of the market by outcompeting, not by force.
You started off with:
" The problem is that once you go public, whether or not its better, its very hard to go back."
Migrated to this:
"Not for anything that gets represented as a right, and which gives benefits of some sort to millions of people."
The later is more detail about the former. In general once you go public, whether or not its better it IS very hard to go back. That doesn't mean that its never done, but its rather hard.
And then in some cases its much harder. Detailing the situations that make it harder isn't changing my premise.
What are the "many other direct and indirect effects" of universal preventive care?
Depends on exactly what's implemented. If you force single payer with no private insurance (at least for normal medical care), than you force some people in to a system that isn't going to be as good for them. And when you don't ration by price, than you will have to ration in some other way, so you will probably have to impose some form of explicit rationing, or alternatively rationing by waiting list. If you try to avoid this, than you will probably wind up increasing total costs, and even then you are going to have to ration at some point. If you eliminate private competition, or you impose prices, rather than having a real market for medical services, than you lose the valuable information contained withing prices and price changes. You lose information about supply, demand, and costs. A mixed system may distort the price information, but you still have some. A fully socialized system loses this information. Political and bureaucratic decision making is rarely a good replacement.
You believe that only drug companies should be in control of prices for their products and their customers are without recourse?
Of course consumers should be able to negotiate prices, but a dominant government buyer is more price setting than negotiations.
So you are saying that you don't have any numbers to support your arguments because you can't see into the future? Then you have no support for your arguments which I have been saying all along.
You don't have any numbers that properly apply either, because you are also unable to accurately predict the future. You can (and sometimes you do) post mostly irrelevant numbers, but that amounts to far less support for your arguments that what I have provided.
" And whatever you want to call it one of the things we will "gain", is a great reduction in future drug research, development, and testing."
How do you know this to be true?
Its a basic economic principle, confirmed again and again by real world experience, that when the expected return for an investment in an area goes down, that investment in that area goes down. Well that's a bit of an oversimplification. If other factors are pushing it up (for example more total investment capital being available), it may go up anyway, but it will go up less than it would without the reduction in expected return.
In this case you would be greatly reducing the expected return, so you would greatly discourage investment.
What portion of current prices go to this venture and what part of R&D is paid for by the US taxpayer anyway?
The majority of basic research is paid for by the government, or by other sources besides the drug companies. But development and testing need a large investment from the drug companies. That large investment has to be justified by a possible return, whether the government contributed nothing or a large part of the total cost (when you include the basic research). And many drugs fail to generate much revenue. They may not be approved, or they may be approved but not be successful on the market. Only a small portion of the drugs are highly successful.
You make these statements as if they were true but they are simply your opinions.
No, they are simply and obviously true. Drug companies have to invest a huge amount of money in R&D and testing for each successful drug. If you think that's opinion than you reflect your ignorance of the pharmaceutical market. If you think people will be likely to continue to invest massive resources on a risky investment, when the possible return is known to be minimal, than you reflect your ignorance about economics and human nature.
Higher costs for medical education? For whom and why? Are you talking about overall of per pupil?
Provide it "for free", and both the overall and per pupil cost should go up. Experience with government aid for higher education has shown this to be the case. |
