With all the sarcasm, it's hard to tell how broad of a point you're trying to make. Do dispute the fact that Australia free-rides to a non-trivial extent on US medical R&D?
Yes I do dispute that notion. Actually I dispute the entire idiot notion that the US is somehow subsidising the rest of the worlds' healthcare.
In actual fact, pharmaceutical / medical device companies will simply charge whatever the market will bear, and it just so happens the US market will bear almost any price. If some market won't bear a profit making price, pharma companies simply won't sell into it.
It makes utterly no sense to sell at a loss and then cross subsidise using the massive rents extracted from US markets, yet that is exactly what most people here seem to think is happening. Although maybe Trump really has managed to 'make America great again'. Speaking of great...
The US spends 17.1% of of its GDP on healthcare. The 5 countries that are richer than the USA (GDP per capita) pay an average of 7.77%. Excluding Qatar, it's 9.03%. The top 10 richest countries (excluding the USA) spend an average of 8.03% of their GDP on healthcare, and I'm pretty sure at least a few of these have universal public health insurance.
You're paying more than DOUBLE compared to the 9 other richest countries in the world. You're simply getting gouged. If you can't even admit that maybe there's a problem here, and instead want to persist with all these insane American exceptionalist fantasies, it's unlikely anything is going to change in American healthcare.
That's a long rant that doesn't even address the standard econ 101 argument. It's especially weird to quote spending data since that's what one would expect if the US was subsidizing the world.
It's also what one would expect if US consumers are getting horribly gouged on prices. But then I guess you'd also expect to see pharmaceutical companies enjoying super high profit levels... Oh wait...
EDIT: Given I am unable to address the 'econ101 argument', would you care to take a shot?
FWIW I do apologise for the sarcastic tone of my posts above. You're right; it's probably not the right way to spark a constructive discussion. To be honest, my tone was a fairly deliberate departure from how I usually post. It's just that I've been in a number of these 'US Healthcare' discussions on HN now and have seen the same points and counterpoints made many times, yet no progress seems to have been made.
I suppose that's a good indication that I should just stay out of these threads until I can maintain a civil tone.
In actual fact, pharmaceutical / medical device companies will simply charge whatever the market will bear, and it just so happens the US market will bear almost any price. If some market won't bear a profit making price, pharma companies simply won't sell into it.
It makes utterly no sense to sell at a loss and then cross subsidise using the massive rents extracted from US markets, yet that is exactly what most people here seem to think is happening. Although maybe Trump really has managed to 'make America great again'. Speaking of great...
The US spends 17.1% of of its GDP on healthcare. The 5 countries that are richer than the USA (GDP per capita) pay an average of 7.77%. Excluding Qatar, it's 9.03%. The top 10 richest countries (excluding the USA) spend an average of 8.03% of their GDP on healthcare, and I'm pretty sure at least a few of these have universal public health insurance.
You're paying more than DOUBLE compared to the 9 other richest countries in the world. You're simply getting gouged. If you can't even admit that maybe there's a problem here, and instead want to persist with all these insane American exceptionalist fantasies, it's unlikely anything is going to change in American healthcare.
Data from here: http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.TOTL.ZS?end=2014&...
And here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi... (using IMF GDP figures)