NIH still represents only 30% of the total funding spent in medical research. A far cry from 'most', jjseth.

NIH advises $30.5 billion in funding for medical research:
http://www.nih.gov/about/budget.htm

Medical funding as of 2005: ($95b)
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/09/20/health/main861059.shtml

Publicly funded research tends to be groundbreaking with little to no attention given to the profitability of the research.

Privately funded research is all about profit, because of the nature of economics it tends to be less pioneering and instead focus on improvements or different varieties of medicine already developed.  For instance, a pharmaceutical company's patent on a drug will expire in five years, so they do research to alter the medicine's chemistry and file a new patent.  Then heavily market their new drug even though it has little to no advantage over the older drug or its generic brands, they can just make a lot more money from that drug because they have a patent.

If it wasn't for public funding, we would not have developed nuclear power plants, satellites, jet engines, and so forth simply because the profitibility of these devices were questionable.  The government funded the research, and then when the private market saw that it could be profitable they jumped on board.

Manus,

Don't divert my discussion with JJ. I was talking about funding and proved him wrong. If you'd like to discuss private/public breakthroughs, we can start up a different discussion.

You proved me wrong?  Honestly, you believe that?

26.4 Billion dollars is nothing to sneeze at and is a huge chunk of money to develop new breakthroughs.

As Manus said above, the groundbreaking work is done with federal money.  When it proves to be a technique that could make a company ALOT of money, they will pick it up and perfect what was already discovered to make themselves huge profits.

Look at any drug that has a similar version that has been out for the long term and generics are made now.  They are cheap and you can get a 30 day prescription for $4 at Wal Mart.   But if you want the name brand or a "New"(When I took it 3 years ago) drug like Nexium, I had to pay $120 for a 30 day supply.. That was with my insurance too.  Prilosec was out first and now you can get it OTC and is far less expensive than Nexium.  They are similar drugs, but slight differences in them.

You are lumping all the funding into just "research" not just "Break throughs".  Can you provide evidence that all the money funded by corporations funds many "Breakthroughs"?  Or are they just spending the sure money on drugs/procedures that were already developed but need perfecting so they can make profits?

So please.  Show me how you proved me wrong. :)

Let's see:

I asked you about this. You were wrong. The government does not provide them majority of research dollars. You showed me NIH data, and I showed you that they do not provide the majority of funds for research. If you want to provide other data points showing the government funds more than the $30 billion cited, then I certainly would like to see it.

Actually, you took that quote out of context.  I was talking about medical breakthroughs if you were to go back and look at the entire post of mine.  If you include all research, sure, The governemtn doesn't fund the majority.  But when it comes to unproven (and costly) research for techniques that may or may not work (usually don't) the bulk of the money is from the Government.

We can play this game all day long if you would like.  The fact of the matter is this.  The Government is a huge contributor when it comes to medical research breakthroughs.  

And how can you quantify that, JJ? Just looking at grants going toward medical research provided by the government?

The only way we, given the criteria, can determine medical breakthroughs is usually through who funds the research - in which, private companies have much more funds than government. Of course, if you want to provide lists that show that the $30b in government research yields more and better results than the $60b plus from private companies, I'd love to see the data

How was he taking what you said out of context when you said "Who puts the majority of money into medical research."

Also... what your saying generally doesn't hold up.  Afterall there is lots of work with private medical companies to liscense their products to poorer countries.

The big "probably won't work" products are the ones that have the biggest profits.

You may be confused since so many breakthroughs seem to come from colleges.  However what you don't know is that private companies often just give money to the colleges for the rights to sell all the products developed.

That's how they handle that stuff.  Rather then have company scientists work on it, they give grants to colleges.

It's why there is a big movement among colleges to have companies sign deals that let generic versions of drugs and machines make it over to africa and other third world areas.

US Private funding is huge... it's something like 40+% of the WORLD medical research budget.

To say losing a large chunk of that wouldn't cause much problems is insane.

Unless the EU is willing to step up... I'd be worried about it.

You may have to put price controls on everythign BUT stuff developed within like... 3 years or so.

Pretty nice solution i'd think.  That way it makes development of new drugs even more important since they're the real profit getters.

mrstickball said: And how can you quantify that, JJ? Just looking at grants going toward medical research provided by the government? The only way we, given the criteria, can determine medical breakthroughs is usually through who funds the research - in which, private companies have much more funds than government. Of course, if you want to provide lists that show that the $30b in government research yields more and better results than the $60b plus from private companies, I'd love to see the data

I'd love to see the data too

Based on the Doctors that I know of (including several in both IL, IA, & NE), somewhere around 1 in 4 are in favor of the public option.

But more importantly, this poll which was released in Sept says 2/3rds of doctors are against the current plan.

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=506199

And 45% go so far as to say they would quit if it were passed....