Here is an anecdote from an expat American here living in Sweden. I require immunoglobulin as my body doesn't produce it naturally like it should. In Sweden I'm on a subcutaneous treatment that greatly improves my quality of life. I can take and do the drugs myself without having to at least get an IV line started like in the US. The subcutaneous treatments are starting in America, but slowly and not as widely as they are relied in Sweden. The benefits are increased independence for patients, safer since it is absorbed through the fat instead of straight into the blood stream, and perhaps most importantly it costs less than half of the IV treatment. This subcutaneous treatment was pioneered, tested and deployed in Europe.

That pharmaceuticals in the US are going to stop R&D is BS. I bet there are many 'hacker' scientists that would happily keep doing their job as long as someone employees them. So maybe it won't be Wall St. but there is still money in it, job satisfaction and they aren't going to trade in their lab coats for McDonald's uniforms. Look at stem cell research, private companies could still fund it all they wanted, but once the federal government's teat was shut off research died. Public healthcare wouldn't diminish the government's interest in funding research. Sweden still has many notable things in the field of medical research, and all from a country with a GDP roughly that of North Carolina.

How so?

You seem to be suggesting that if the US went to the same model as the rest of the world, we would all collectively implode? You need to explain that position a little deeper.

I've heard this argument a bunch recently. You're suggesting the rest of the developed world has somehow made the US its bitch as far as medical research and development goes - the US does all the hard work, and everyone else with a public health system reaps the rewards.

I don't buy it.

It also ignores the fact that even if we accept his premise and if we assume that every single cent of the R&D money put up by the US comes in via high health care payments (it doesn't - a bunch of it is government funded and/or funded through charitable organizations), then if the US going to a universal healthcare system somehow halved the cost (bringing it down to the French level, while extending coverage to all), and this price cut somehow only came out of the money that'd get pumped into R&D and thus cut it to the bone, nothing would be stopping America from taking the savings and putting them right back into R&D.

In other words: Money doesn't magically disappear just because the way it is distributed changes.

"Money doesn't magically disappear just because the way it is distributed changes." Sure it does. Do you think these private groups would be making multi-million dollar bets if the prize of huge profits weren't out there?

http://www.xconomy.com/tag/Life-Sciences

Not all the cash is redistributed taxes - there is tons of private investment going to develop treatment