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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (3435)	12/23/2007 8:48:01 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42652

Its a very good answer. What ever the government spends on research, the drug companies spend hundreds of millions per drug they develop. Depending on how exactly you count the cost, it might even be over a billion. Whether the amount the government helps out per drug amounts to 1 cent or billions of dollars, the drug companies are still spending those hundreds of millions. They do so despite the large costs, and high risks, because of the chance of large rewards. Deprive them of the chance of large rewards, and you won't get nearly as much effort to develop new drugs, at least not without lowering the cost of development. How might you lower the cost. Well it isn't really lowering it, but you could have more and more of it paid by the government. Or perhaps you could lower the costs involved in getting a drug approved, but I don't really support the first idea and I'm very skeptical that the 2nd will happen to any significant extent.