by Bryan Jennings

Created on: February 13, 2008

The answer to this question depends largely on how you perceive medical treatment, including the cost of medication. To those who see health care as another market, another commodity to be sold at whatever the market can bare, than it makes perfect sense to let the consumer pay the price of R&D for new drugs. However, many people see health care more as a public good, something that all people, regardless of wealth or social standing, deserve as a simple human right. If health care is a public good, than it is only logical that the government pays for it the same way it pays for roads, police, the military, social security and other such public goods.

People will argue that the health care industry is a business, that companies create drugs with their bottom line in mind. Of course they do. But companies that create weapons for our soldiers, give our police equipment and provide the concrete and machines necessary to pave and maintain roads are also working for a profit, and yet the individual drivers or those being aided by the police, do not need to pay for it as often as they use it. It is acknowledged that these services, while made possible only with a profit motive, are important enough to be paid for by the government, or, rather, by everyone, so that everyone can use them.

There is a strong case to be made for medicine being considered a public good. The first point is that in many ways, we already see it that way and act accordingly. The federal budget includes billions of dollars a year to help pay for medical care. Some of the biggest government research grants are those that pay for research into new cures for diseases such as cancer, or diabetes, or heart disease. In this way, the government, and by association, the governed, have acknowledged that health is something worthy of spending federal dollars on.

However, there is a disconnect in how we perceive medicine obviously, since consumers are still the ones paying for the R&D into new drugs. Well, actually, that's something of a misnomer, in fact, the government does pay sizable portions of R&D budgets through government grants, and the companies themselves pay large amounts to research new drugs. They just pass the spendings onto the consumer, making drugs nigh unaffordable for those who don't have health insurance. As such, only the rich, or the well employed are entitled to the newest care. This seems in gross violation of most senses of decency. I am all for capitalistic ideas, but letting people die because they couldn't afford heart medicine seems a sick perversion of free market ideas.

All Americans who use Medicare understand that health care is a public good. All Americans who pay for it understand the same. Why can we not take the one step past where we currently are, and accept that the government, by which to say, all of us, should pay the cost to keep people healthy? In the end, it would improve everyone's life, and society would benefit. Isn't that what spending tax dollars is supposed to be all about?

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