Re: Trumpled (Alternative Leading)
Reply #3586 –
I'm not sure it's fair to paint everyone with the same brush, it may even be as extreme as those under criticism.
But it's open season on the contradictions, the problems in the USA are primarily corporate and / or religion.
For example, I know of a researcher working on a cure for anaemia, it involves the use of CRISPR. The budget for the development of CRISPR was about US$2M total, it took several years. Compared to historical methods CRISPR costs almost nothing, yet a treatment for anaemia in the USA will cost you(as a single individual) US$2M. That is the whole multi-year budget of the R&D that lead to the CRISPR invention in the first place. Most of that US$2M cost is profiteering and legal liabilities, hardly any of it goes to the scientists and medical professionals involved in the treatment, the direct material cost is effectively zero, you can make a batch of a cure and send it soaked into a piece of paper by mail to the medical centre conducting the treatment at the cost of a postage stamp. So the direct cost a treatment would currently be 1/50th of that asking price, the materials, people, hospital stay, post care, etc., etc., and it is a cost rapidly falling as those with the capability and knowledge to do the treatment grows.
Much of the legal cost comes out defending court cases driven by religious ideology, or profiteering of risk / liability, which also forms the basis of much of the politics.