[jellicle]

Has nothing to do with "innovation", since nearly all healthcare research is paid for by the U.S. government anyway, and it's much less money than you think.

The claimed expenses for "research" are mostly about bringing slight variations of drugs to market in order to extend patent protections - that is, they are rent-seeking.

> "More than four fifths of all funds for basic research to discover new drugs and vaccines come from public sources."

http://www.bmj.com/content/345/bmj.e4348?ijkey=Y1g4ZVUImIbtX...

The story of healthcare costs in the U.S. is entirely to do with profits for drug companies and hospitals, and has almost nothing to do with "innovation".

[refurb]

The key to your comment is "basic" research.

You can discover a new drug for a few tens of millions of dollars. Now to get that drug to market? You need to cough up a few hundred million dollars.

Discovering a drug doesn't save any patients, getting it to market does and THAT is paid for by private companies.

[Retric]

It costs tens of millions of dollars in large part because US healthcare is so expensive. The actual handing out of drugs is fairly low effort, it's everything else that makes trials so expensive.

[refurb]

It costs 10s of millions of dollars because that is how you prove a drug is safe. That isn't unique to the US. If you want to launch a new drug in the EU, it's not going to cost you any less.

[Retric]

the number of FDA-regulated investigators running trials abroad has increased by 15 percent each year, while the number of U.S.-based investigators declined 5.5 percent annually.

Several forces are pushing trials elsewhere, the researchers noted: cost (a trial at a top medical center in India may cost less than one-tenth per patient what it would cost at a second-tier U.S. center); faster approval times; and less red tape. http://health.usnews.com/health-news/managing-your-healthcar...

PS: Of note: In the US, sponsors may receive a 50% tax credit for certain clinical trials. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinical_trial#Economics

[tete]

Which has another problem. Investors tend to force drugs onto the market, even when there is evidence for drugs having bad side effects, like killing you and that's nothing that ever changed.

[danielweber]

There are so many weasel words in "basic research to discover new drugs" that I can't even begin to evaluate it.

Or, you can look at the actual drugs that get approved, and back-trace them to their sources. Hey, someone already did that. Here: http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2010/11/04/where_drugs_...