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Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Socialized Pharmaceuticals - Essential to Truly Universal Healthcare

Of all possible industries, pharmaceuticals should be in the control of nations, not companies. Like the resource/energy sector, it is as essential to every nation as profit is to every company.

It comes down to motivation. A company's main motivation is continual, ideally increasing, profit. A wise nation's primary motivation is the well-being of its citizens so it can have healthy, productive taxpayers powering its economy and systems.

A company wants perpetual customers, but a nation wants healthy citizens who drain the healthcare system as little as possible. The former seeks treatments, the latter cures.

Companies also lack the motivation to research medicines for rare diseases or to create cheaper alternatives.

A nation can pour resources into its universities and other research institutes regardless of profitability because it gets benefits in the form of improved productivity of taxpayers and less drain on the health and legal systems. Companies look short-term to the next quarter. Nations must look long term if they are to survive.

If Harper really wanted a healthy economy, he'd work on achieving a healthy populace first. You can't have one without the other, at least not in a real democracy. The health of slaves doesn't matter as long as you have a lot of them.

No business should profit from suffering. No company should own the copyright to health.

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