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[Swiss Mercenary]

It is important that there be a significant amount of incentive for research, because with less research there is going to be less innovation and worse treatment of patients, from diagnosis to cure.

Considering that the biggest holy grail for commercial medical research is finding a drug that 'cures' the symptoms, (Not to mention accountability to shareholders -> Pushing a drug that's less effective then what others already made out on the market -> Not performing or reporting on proper scientific studies (Conducting only the ones required for certification)), commercial medical research is, in my mind a terrible endeavour.

Leave research to scientists - ones that aren't accountable to shareholders.

The incentive for most researchers in the U.S. lies within the monetary gain, and while many who put up the capital for research may be doing it for altruistic reasons, at the end of the day, money is in the back of their mind.

Indeed. Why would you want to spend your life doing research at a university for 80,000$/year, actually trying to come up with drugs that cure people, when you could be getting paid 200,000$/year by a medical company that's not interested with the effectiveness, safety, or oversaturation of the market, as long as it doesn't cut down into their bottom line.

Consider how much money is say, spent on drug advertising - that's money that's not going towards finding new drugs. It's going down the drain.

And the solution to that problem isn't privatising medical research. It's the other way around.

Also, in a government regulated system, research is the most likely area to be cut - there is no other place for budget shortfalls to hit. You can't cut salaries more (then there would be no doctors), the machinery used for testing can't be cut out, and the drugs that are already known must be perscribed and paid for, and so research is where there are problems.

So, instead of paying for something where we'd be getting our money's worth, it's preferable to pay our pill tax to drug companies, who'll spend half of it on marketing, and the other on outrageous (Compared to the public sector) salaries.

I'm not saying that a doctor's worth only 80,000... But When there exists such a gap in salaries, funding, etc, it's no surprise that private companies have monopolised the industry.

As for my second point - my knowledge of the universal systems is fairly limited, but my understanding is that in many cases there is a significant wait between when paper work is filed and when doctors are seen, unless it is an urgent-care situation. An example of the problems with this would arise for someone my age, 19, who is suddenly having health problems. They make an appointment for the doctor, and 6 months later they're seen, in the meantime a disease has progressed in such a fashion that a more complicated, painful, or problematic approach to treatment must be taken. I, as a patient, have lost because of the system.

It's never taken me more then a week between scheduling an appointment, and showing up for one. Now, I've only been to a few specialists, and not some extremely obscure ones, but so far, I've been content with the speed of the process. The results, not so much, but that's what you get for going to doctors. I do hear horror stories about people having to wait 6 months for non-life-threatening operations, but it hasn't been my experience, so far.

And for the record, if you want to see waste, just look at the US medical system. Much more money is wasted per dollar spent on curing people in it, compared to various NHS services throughout Europe or Canada.