Life expectancy is not a simple proxy for quality of health care. Exercise, diet, happiness, genetics, disaster propensity, and many cultural factors have an impact on life expectancy.

Compare specifically to the UK then - we get no exercise, have awful diets, are miserable, have a more inbred version of US genetics, fucking love self-inflicted disasters apparently, and are culturally mostly indistinguishable from the US. And yet, despite the fact that we spend a fraction of what you spend on healthcare, have a couple more years' life expectancy.

And by almost any measure we are no better than and frequently behind other western democracies in healthcare.

European countries are free riders on the American healthcare system.

Americans pay out the nose for drug prescriptions, which fund the vast majority of research and development budgets, which then benefit all people, worldwide.

Come on, the big companies are multinationals, and not all of them do all research stateside. Novartis are Swiss, GSK are British, Merck KGA are German, Novo Nordisk are Danish, Takeda are Japanese &c pp. The Yanks overpay terribly for healthcare, that's true.

It doesn't matter where they do research, it matters where they sell their drugs.

And all of those countries make more revenue selling to the US than they do any other country by a long shot.

Of course they do. But that's not the fault of the other countries, its because US politicians allow the pharmaceutical and health care industry to get away with it. The fix is not to force others to pay the same high price for life saving medication; the solution is to bring the costs down for all. But in the US we allow corporations and lobbyists to control the narrative and people actually think its ok to force someone to choose between being able to afford their medication or food.

While I probably agree with your thesis, you have not actually addressed GP's assertion that the US subsidizes Drug Research. There is no question that we pay more for drugs than others. There is also no question that it is better for the consumer if we have cheaper drugs.

What you haven't answered is whether the research can be supported without the American market subsidizing of that research.

It is in fact, expensive to develop new drugs and something has to pay for that development.

I think this is very self-serving propaganda by the American healthcare system. And even if it's true let's fix this by charging less in the US and see what happens to the rest of the world. .

As a European, I agree.

Americans pay out the nose for all medical care, not just drugs. So I doubt your assertion really holds water.

If the world wants and needs better drugs, there are other ways to fund research. If we give a damn, we can find such solutions.

>>European countries are free riders on the American healthcare system.

Citation needed.