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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (394513)	6/27/2008 11:09:42 AM
From: Tenchusatsu	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1577883

JF, > No, it wouldn't become "government-run health care". All the providers would still be private, the drug companies would still be private. Frankly, I don't think that distinction matters. I have a friend who's works for Big Pharma advertising, and I asked him whether he feared universal health care taking away his job. He felt reasonably secure in the notion that government won't want to break up Big Pharma immediately because they still have lots of influence over government. I'm not so sure, though. With Democrats openly talking about taking over Big Oil, I don't think it's a big leap for them to then talk about taking over Big Pharma and the industry of health care providers. Tenchusatsu

To: Road Walker who wrote (394513)	6/27/2008 11:11:21 AM
From: i-node	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1577883

>> Would government have more influence on prices over time? Would people who now spend the years to become physicians opt for more financially rewarding careers? Yes. Would drug companies be driven to abandon research on new, expensive drugs because they don't generate the required profit margins? Yes. Would new imaging technologies cease to develop because the government won't pay for them? Yes. Would the government decide that spending $6,000 a week for chemotherapy for a severely ill patient is just too much given the risk of recurrence of a metastatic cancer? Quite possibly. You cannot cut healthcare expenditures as you've proposed without it adversely affecting the quality of care. This is not a difficult concept to understand and I don't know why it is so hard for you.