Quote:
|
Originally Posted by aceventura3
So my question about Canada and its R&D activity has to do with how has taxation to pay for national healthcare affected investments in R&D. I don't have the answer, but it doesn't seem like you have the answer either.
It doesn't seem like anyone has any answers other than to say healthcare in Canada is better than in the US. O.k. I guess that settles it. Thanks
|
Research into pharmaceuticals is not directly related to Universal Health Care as I see it.
Maybe I am wrong.
On one hand, you have the big pharmaceutical companies who carry out research in the name of making a buck should they develop a drug that actually works (without causing you to die as a side effect of something completely different).
On the other, you have a government run health insurance plan where everyone is insured, and "making a profit" out of sickness is eliminated from the equation.
Canada has plenty of research going on right now in disease treatment I can assure you.
It used to be that a great deal of research was carried out by government institutions, universities, etc. Now, more and more, if not exclusively, drug research is done by the big pharmaceutical companies. The catch word of the day is "public private partnerships" which basically means that the tax payer pays and the pharma companies do the work and of course, keep all the profit.
Back 50 years ago, the result of government research was vaccinations for polio, scarlette feaver, TB, small pox, etc. Antibiotics were discovered in British government run facilities.
Now, I can't think of too many big discoveries that have been revealed to the world since everything went private.
Being the conspiracy theorist that I am, I figure that the pharma companies don't want to CURE anything. They just want to come up with a "treatement"
They would rather have you swallow a beaker full of pills to alieviate the symptoms of AIDS rather than cure it or vaccinate against it.
I hardly believe in the nobility of the Big Corporations, sorry. Probably due to my exposure to big corporations.
I have no problem with companies making a buck, but I see how they go about doing it on a daily basis and it is hardly noble.