Unfortunately for you there is large-scale data that completely refutes this anecdote. According to Kaiser Family data, premiums were increasing at an average of 6-7% per year in the US during the 1990s and 2000s. However in the 2010s, after the ACA was enacted, premiums have increased on average of 3%.

So despite whatever back-asswords inkling you might have in your head, the ACA has lowered the growth of premiums by half of their prior pace and healthcare spending in general has slowed from its prior pace as well.

What exactly is this "high-cost safety net" that you speak of ? Healthcare outcomes are more than just drug prices ... 

$265 per capita is only enough to cover the R&D expenses of pharma companies in the US. Does that "something" about your nation's model includes the US being a sacrificial lamb ? If so how would that help them since they're the ones being used already ? Should big pharma in the US just pass the cost of development to Europe instead ?  

You should be fortunate enough that your fragile model isn't facing a trade war where your nation would lose access to the most modern foreign developed medicine like how China is experiencing a crisis in their IT industry since their access to US semiconductor technology has been circumvented ... 

I assume that your nation simply doesn't see the value in having a independent technology sector which is a shame since your success will be entirely hinged upon if you guys cross roads with the US or not ... (with the UK leaving the EU, you now face more disunity than ever in a big and growing industry where a couple big players like the UK and Switzerland are fading from your picture)

Having said all of that what exactly is your nation's biggest contribution to the global pharmaceutical industry ? 

I'm not sure what your point is exactly... but even with school people want alternatives to the public option. Republicans and libertarians actually argue for the voucher system, which allows parents to use money that would go to a public schools to pay for private school instead. Charter schools function with less money than public school just to operate with less interference.

Personally, I think blue states like New York or California should create universal healthcare at a local level and see how that goes. Force everybody in the state to pay a new high tax they can't opt out of, even those happy with their private option. Then lets wait and see how many people escape or vote red.

It´s a government funded safety net that means the government covers cost above that amount, which in turn is funded by all citizens through the universal healthcare system. And you are looking at this matter from a faulty perspective since there is nothing that says R&D needs to be as expensive if you ave a proper right-off period for its benefits.

The second part you will need to prove with some facts because it just sounds made up =).

We have independent research companies. For example, Astra was founded in Sweden and later marged with Zenica to form Astrazenice, one of the world largest pharmaceutical companies. 

When it comes to contributions within the field, you need to look at several key factors.

- One is publications: https://www.scimagojr.com/countryrank.php?area=2700&year=2017. In this area the US contributes with about 16 times more citations, yet the US is about 30 times as big as a country.

- You can also look at the global innovation index: https://www.globalinnovationindex.org/analysis-indicator where we rank fifth in the world in R&D (this is within all areas though).

- We are also fourth in the world in terms of spending on research and development: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_research_and_development_spending.

If you want a specific example of medical innovations, well the Pacemaker is a Swedish invention.

The mistake many on your side of the argument makes though, is that you don´t argue around the fact that we should look at life expectancy, not the number of innovations. If the US is such a succesful country in the medical field, why are they aranked 31 in the world? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy

Isn't Astrazeneca a british private big pharma company though ?  

Sure R&D doesn't need to be expensive if you're only looking to break even but isn't it a smarter idea to keep the profits so that you can build your next generation drug candidates and keep doing that perpetually and so forth instead constantly bankrupting every biotechnology startup ? Does the latter somehow not seem dysfunctional to you in the slightest ? Besides R&D for drug candidates keeps doubling every decade ... (I fear it's getting prohibitively expensive to innovate new drugs since Gilead just had to fork over 10 billion dollars to get production rights for a single molecule) 

Citations aren't everything. China is 3rd in terms of # of citations but their data is mostly garbage and they mostly don't bring drug candidates for the most part so far ... 

Using life expectancy as a measure of success is not a very useful comparison point. Japan decimates just about every western liberal democracies in terms of life expectancy at a portion of the price compared to all OECD nations but would any sane physician say that Japan is somehow delivering higher quality of care than their western counterparts ? Singapore has the 3rd highest life expectancy yet it doesn't have a single payer healthcare system but it also destroys just about every nation in value for only spending a fraction of their healthcare costs compared to everyone else. At that point instead of the question being framed as to why the US spends so much per capita on a worse healthcare outcome the same question can be raised about why European countries are spending more on healthcare yet have worse outcomes than Singapore ? 

Again life expectancy doesn't actually tell you anything about the quality of the healthcare delivered. "What happens if you remove deaths from fatal injuries from the life expectancy tables? Among the 29 members of the OECD, the U.S. vaults from 19th place to…you guessed it…first. Japan, on the same adjustment, drops from first to ninth."

Well that was convenient, remove life expectancy as a factor in order to reach first place 😊. And publications as well a citations are the usual measurements with which you estimate the success within a field.

Haha, I enjoy the argument you guys are having, but I think this new topic of the value of universal healthcare vs privatized is way off the rails =D

I see several posts I want to respond to, but then I would be contributing to the derailment; something I have been trying to stop doing recently =D

What exactly are you trying to source? The US has the best hospitals and surgeons in the world, if you can afford to get the highest level of care.

That's the thing, if you're confident it could save people money and in theory provide them equal quality of healthcare, it will prove to the country its the best way to provide healthcare.

If states want to provide healthcare for all its population, they can do it with some limits. For example, don't allow people to move in simply to drain healthcare resources, they would not qualify for the state's socialized healthcare. A socialized healthcare system needs be responsible with its resources, something dems seem to ignore when suggesting we should provide free healthcare for countless illegals.

Obviously I mean universal at a state level, its not a new concept I'm creating. I'm not even sure why we use the word universal, maybe it just sounds nice but it was the language used in Vermont when they were considering it.

Just raise taxes on everybody and businesses which would happen anyway. Also limit who can benefit from the healthcare system but can't contribute. Hence, don't allow people to come into the state just to sponge off the system.