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A comment on Single-payer healthcare would save $450B and 68k lives a year: study. Parent comment

Re:Single-payer healthcare would save $450B and 68k lives a ... by macinjosh on Friday February 21, 2020 @06:19PM (#22387997)
> Somehow, the current US health system is the most expensive on the planet

You know why? Because we pay for most of the R&D, done by industry, that the rest of the world benefits from. For example, other developed nations like Canada have been able to benefit from new drugs invented in America's more capitalist system by restricting prices in their country even though we don't.

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Re:Single-payer healthcare would save $450B and 68k lives a ... by pjmorris on Friday February 21, 2020 @08:53PM (#22388866)
US pharmaceutical company R&D spending is ~80B per year [0]. Healthcare spending is ~3.6T, making pharma R&D about 2% of overall healthcare spending.

Based on the above back-of-the-napkin math, I'm inclined to think pharma R&D isn't really the main factor.

What is your support for believing it is the case?

[0] https://www.biopharmadive.com/news/phrma-research-developmen...

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