[kelseyfrog]

The positive side seems to be that relinquishing our position[1] as the medical research country should lower healthcare prices. For decades we've been told that our healthcare prices were due to medical research - drug discovery, device innovation, &etc. By destroying our ability to do research, we should expect to see healthcare prices equalize at a price where those costs are no longer factored in, right?

1. By way of self-inflicted damage

[lapcat]

> For decades we've been told that our healthcare prices were due to medical research

That was a lie to justify insurance price gouging.

[Spivak]

Hahaha, prices come down?! In this economy? That's not very pro-shareholder of you.

[kelseyfrog]

If that doesn't happen, then to what degree can we conclude that being a medical research country wasn't in fact the reason why our healthcare prices were so high?

[postpawl]

There’s already a lot of studies about this

> More than half of excess U.S. health spending was associated with factors likely reflected in higher prices, including more spending on: administrative costs of insurance (~15% of the excess), administrative costs borne by providers (~15%), prescription drugs (~10%), wages for physicians (~10%) and registered nurses (~5%), and medical machinery and equipment (less than 5%). Reductions in administrative burdens and drug costs could substantially reduce the difference between U.S. and peer nation health spending.

https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2...

[w0m]

Honestly; the exact opposite. Removing funding for research means either research is canceled, or funded private.

Funding the research privately increases costs to end user as private ensurer is directly accruing more cost. Research stopping increases costs to end user as new/novel cures/treatments aren't found.

Cost for consumer goes up because of lost opportunity cost of 1) learning to diagnose earlier 2) finding new or cheaper cures/treatments.

You can make the argument 'But other countries will pick up the slack!' - but that doesn't necessarily help either, why would they give us the results of their research cheaper? US already jacked up pricing via an executive order on drug pricing just this year to knock that.

Publicly funded medical research is an absolute positive for the US general public health and wallets. We're all losing here on both ends of the spectrum ($$ and actual general public health).