universal health care

"The problem is, though, that if you took a survey of 100 random people, less than 10 will have actually heard of the drug." Useless argument. Patients aren't the ones writing the prescriptions, doctors and other health care professionals are. A similar survey with doctors will reveal that a great percentage of doctors will be familiar with LDN and its efficacy. Please do not forget that doctors themselves do not get any money from prescribing one drug over another, so prescribing LDN off-label will be fine. "You said that it would take "billions of billions of dollars" to research a new drug. I highly doubt it would be that much, as $1 billion squared looks like this: $1,000,000,000,000,000,000. That much for one drug? I don't think so." I apologize and retract my statement, replacing it with the term "billions of dollars". "If I want to help another country, I can donate money to one of the hundreds of thousands of organizations devoted to the cause of foreign aid. Our money should be used for our drugs. Not theirs. Also, our country can help them fund their own research programs to aid them in this issue." I'm glad you understand my point. Are you then aware that the reason drug companies have money to make new drugs is that we pit drug companies against each other and let the free market boost our economy? Implementing universal health care would decrease cash movement, and make us LOSE money. I am glad you concede this point. "The point of spending billions of dollars for a new pill is to SAVE LIVES. You seem to be completely overlooking the whole reason we have HEALTH care. It is for the HEALTH of the PEOPLE. If that is the cost of health care, so be it. The government's job is not to make money. We have taxes for that. The government's job is to benefit THE PEOPLE." Wrong. Your view is naive, unfounded, and contradicts the practices of drug companies and economics. Private drug companies research medication based on profit. Our economy is mainly capitalistic, profit drives businesses in order to satisfy the public. You are WRONG in saying that drug companies research in order to save lives. They do it to make profit. If there was no profit, private drug companies will no longer research drugs and only government sponsored facilities will research drugs. This makes things much less efficient and will make things much more expensive. Taxes will have to be raised enormously in order to research just a few drugs. Please understand our economic system and that our country does not work on the ideals you just stated. Yes, it would be nice if it worked out the way you said, but it doesn't. That's called socialism. And it never works. "One other thing that you didn't mention is the insurance companies. Millions of Americans are going TO DIE because they can't pay for emergency room treatment and are essentially DENIED THE RIGHT TO LIVE." Medicare. Medicaid. Besides, people aren't being denied the right to live. To say so is a gross exaggeration and makes you seem overly emotional and biased about this debate. Health care is expensive. Insurance makes it cheaper. You obviously have no idea of the economic repercussions of universal health care. I will clarify this in my concluding statements. "The point of universal health care is not to make money. It is to provide health care for everyone. The money should not matter. I'm sure it's great to be a rich capitalist, but I'm also pretty sure it's not so great WHEN YOU'RE SICK." Incorrect. Money does matter because it is how it will be done. For a person who gets sick 3-4 times a year, it will be extremely unfair for him to pay thousands of dollars extra in order to provide a person on welfare and unemployment enough money to get prescriptions filled. We don't live in fairy-land. Money runs this country and doesn't pop out of thin air. You propose a lot of good things but they aren't realistic. *********** My opponents points have all been invalidated. He proposes nothing new in his concluding remarks and has failed to respond to all the points I have made about universal health care being detrimental to the welfare of this country. I will now restate them: "Drug companies use the profits to research more drugs. After selling one medication, they use the profits to pay their researchers and scientists to come up with more drugs to make more money and the cycle keeps going. The U.S. churns out new medicines because drug companies keep competing with each other over profits. New drugs = big profits, that's why they keep churning out new drugs that aren't just being used in the U.S., they are being used all over the world! With universal health care here, drug companies would stop competing with each other because prices would be regulated too heavily. What would be the point of spending billions of dollars for a new pill if you can't charge lots of money for it? So if we implement universal health care, it's bad for everyone in the long run." I combine this previous argument with my new explanation of economics in general, which my opponent severely lacks understanding of. My opponent makes a grandiose speech about how we should not worry about money, that "that's what taxes are for", that life should come before everything. He portrays himself as a valiant crusader for the poor, and I applaud him for his noble aspirations. However, REALISTICALLY, universal health care will be terrible in the long run. Setting aside how universal health care will decimate the drug economy, it will also put great strain on the citizens. Welfare, unemployment, medicaid, these things all benefit those that do not deserve it. The tax dollars of hardworking, productive members of society are being drained towards these people. It is forced charity. However, it's not that bad. People do have some right to life, because they may hit on hard times. Universal health care would more than double the amount of money being taken out of the pockets of the middle class, to benefit the feeders at the bottom. Most people only get sick a few times a year, why should they have to pay thousands of dollars to the poor lower class? It may be "mean" or "inhumane" of me to say these things, but it certainly isn't fair, or just. The middle class suffers too. In addition to being ridiculously unjust to the population, universal health care would shut down the economy. No more competition, no more insurance companies, this would cause stagnation in a major part of our service-oriented economy. Since my opponent has made not a single argument for universal health care, I rest my case.