| Mr Khan said: Not really, because unlike roads, a medical innovation can be used anywhere, by anyone, especially if its an international non-profit fund. There would likely be tugs in different directions to try to focus research in an area where your country needs the help or where a firm in your country has comparative advantage, but since the point would be to focus on innovation for innovations sake (implementation being the matter of the countries' health systems individually) it would all work out in the end. Cold-war style "let's put money towards this idea and see where it goes even if it's not going to help soldiers in the field today" research and development, but for the purposes of peace. The politics of it would be insanely difficult to implement, but neither can America sacrifice health care access for its citizens just to keep research going. |
Your ignoring the part where tons of funding goes to defunct research as political favors within countries to keep things going.
Better to fund this failed research in the US that isn't likely to ever work then to send that money over to China for a Chinese country. This is a big enough problem in the current research community as scientists continue to get grants for discredited research, some even releasing massaged data just to get it. (Since this is their careers)
It's why private driven research tends to be a bit better then government funded. Private research companies cut off projects that look to struggle, even ones that might have a chance of still being promising.
Throw in nationalistic pride and buisness contracts...
Sure it can. Healthcare costs increases have actually slowly been reaching an equilibrium... and the kind of healthcare that those people will get access to... doesn't actually seem to help physical care at all.
Cold war funding was more or less specifically about getting an advantage over Russia, even when it looked like it wasn't, since there was a need to "prove" something.
Conflict and competition has always been a better motivator then cooperation.
Additionally, it's not like there is actually money to be spending.
