[Brakenshire]

I think the reason you want them connected is the ability to channel private capital towards achieving medical progress.

If there is a disease which costs the general population tens of billions of dollars a year, either in providing healthcare or in an inability to carry on a normal life, work, look after yourself and so on, then there is an inherent and huge pot of money which can go to solving the problem. If you sever the connection, you rely solely on funding achieved through political processes. Which given the level of expensive failure inherent to the process, tabloid campaigns, lack of public understanding, and short termism from politicians, does not seem like something we should rely on.

For instance, can you imagine what the reaction would have been if the hundreds of millions spent on alpha-beta clearance for Alzheimers had been spent by public bodies? Future funding would depend on a battle waged on twitter, opinion pages and talk radio.

[PeterisP]

Furthermore, you could pretty much forget about funding for socially/politically unpopular diseases - I can certainly imagine some voters rabidly requesting their representatives that HIV drugs shouldn't be funded at all because God's punishment should be allowed to take its course.

[scotty79]

> I think the reason you want them connected is the ability to channel private capital towards achieving medical progress.

And yet, despite having that connections, not only in the medicine but in all branches of technology, most impactful discoveries of last century come from tax funded university research not business.

Business is best at researching how to reduce the cost of manufacturing and distribution of a thing. Which is very important by itself. But when it comes to finding new stuff business usually falls short because it's too risky.

> inherent and huge pot of money

Size of this pot of money is direct result of how much the company will be allowed to charge for the drug once it's discovered.

Comapnies are so risk averse that you have to make this pot of gold disproportionately huge by allowing them to charge whatever they will manage to squeeze out of the market.