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

To: Alighieri who wrote (705876)	3/26/2013 11:51:28 AM
From: i-node	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1573714

>> I suppose that's why health care plans around the world dominated by private insurance cost more per capita...it's a fact free zone we have here. That's sort of a silly remark. Government payers can simply say, "We're not providing that level of care, we're not going to support innovation, and that's that." And they will benefit from our innovation, which is 100% driven by profit motive (little of which is derived from government payers). You don't seem to be able to comprehend this simplest of facts. Without the private insurance companies in America our health care system would have been stuck in the 80s. Or the 70s. As would the health care systems of those other countries. Just as Medicare has done in the US, government payers can just refuse to pay. And when that happens, everyone suffers. So, the question is whether we are willing to pay more in the US for better health care which also benefits other countries, or do we want to argue about paying "more than our fair share." I can't speak for anyone else, but IMO, paying for more than our share to guarantee the existence of better medical technologies is a worthwhile investment. Would IBM and Bell Labs have invested all that money in research if there were no profit potential somewhere along the line? Of course not. These are not charitable organizations. They're in it for the money, just like everyone else in the world. Drug companies and medical device manufacturers are even more driven by the profit motive, because they generally do no possess the de facto market dominance of an IBM or Bell before the breakup.