Raymond Raad on Medical Innovation

The United States leads the world in medical innovation, but it doesn't have to stay that way. Physician Raymond Raad believes that Obama-style health care reform may threaten the pace of medical innovation in the United States. He details his findings in the new Cato paper, "Bending the Productivity Curve."

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=10979

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• raymond raad
• medical innovation
• obamacare
• cato institute

[AshillaBeige]

Just think if Europe and Canada were developing medicine at the same rate as the US. We'd be curing cancer with pills by meow.

[a4finger]

Great Video

[Wormtail81]

Is the payment difference adjusted for buying power? Just asking, here.

[Wormtail81]

I actually think the NIH provides for what would otherwise be a dearth of incredibly valuable basic research. Basic research may be classified as a positive externalize, in which case the private market (which I am a big fan of, by the way) provides them at a level less than what is efficient.

[Jaspian]

ltlblu (contd)

... effects of a new sweetener or fatty acid on say stomach ulcers (etc). We also need to include the amount of non-corporate private research such as private grants at universities, and private university studies, which makes up the bulk of "pure research" findings (at least in the US).

But even so, on avg 48% of the world's medical innovations to hit markets over the past 10 years have come from private US companies, whether its based on NIH research or not is kinda irrelevant

[Jaspian]

ltlblu-

Public research from the NIH accounts for about 2% of the overall spending on applicable medical science in the US, and for the most part they're not concerned with application. They might study how virus X transmits and theorize or test a means of stopping that transmission, but devising a compound and a delivery system would be the private industry. In effect, the NIH is useless without the private sector.

Most of the NIH research is around lifestyle... studies about the long term...

[bubbaburke]

@ltlblugrl

The NIH has a different model compared to other countries funded medical research. There is no tenure or security with their funding of investigators. If you cannot put forward a grant with good science and impact then you will not get funded. Only the top12-15% of proposed grants get funded. The contrast is the European models of support a person and let them do whatever science they want, independent of the merit.

[ltlblugrl]

I don't necessarily disagree with this video, but I'd like to see more information on how private innovation would work after the elimination of the National Institutes of Health.