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

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (3534)	12/31/2007 8:13:40 AM
From: Road Walker	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42652

Interesting article Peter, thanks for finding it. re: If you include the cost of government overhead it pushes the cost to US consumers for medical research to around 7 1/2% of GDP. Huh? From the article: "The United States spent an estimated 5.6% of its total health expenditures on biomedical research..." I don't know how you get from "5.6% of total health expenditures" to 7.5% of GDP (without some real funky math). Also, the topic was drug company research, and who funds basic research. The article makes a clear distinction between pharmaceutical company research and other "industry" research and notes: "However, the growth in total spending obscures some changes in how that money is spent. Although the proportions of basic and applied federal spending have remained constant, pharmaceutical companies have increasingly emphasized clinical trials." So, the article proves my point wrt drug companies not funding basic research. And thus, if the US competed with the rest of the world marketplace, instead of subsidizing the drug company profits, it wouldn't lead to a decrease in drug research.