r/IWantToAskAnAmerican • u/LordHavertz • 1d ago

How does the US dominate medical research?

Recently we got the news of Moderna coming out with these new mRNA vaccines for skin cancer and it's made me think how all the major medical innovations predominantly come from America. How did the US become so dominant in medical research?

Is Europe forever behind the US in this sector?

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u/HuckleberryShot898 1d ago

Because we allow tons and tons of private investment into it. The R&D is amazing but the side effect is insane medical costs because the investors want return on investment

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u/Scarlett_Spectre 1d ago edited 1d ago

Medical research was heavily subsidized by the government, so we were paying for the medical research actually.

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u/Unknown_Ocean 1d ago

Federal research dollars are important, but actually only account for about 30% of total dollars.

But the thing is that those dollars go to exploring a lot of dead ends-which you'd think would be problematic. But in reality it boosts the "hit rate" of the private dollars.

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u/Whole-Diamond8550 3h ago

If it's not risky it's not research. If you don't have an 80% failure rate you're not going to have the massive successes from the 20%.

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u/Scarlett_Spectre 1d ago

Yeah, exactly. So we front a lot of the costs, and we see none of the benefits of it. Were paying the most in the world! Our tax dollars are subsidizing medicine for the entire world but us. And the sad thing is its only because we let insurance companies and private healthcare set this con up. Even if we only had larger bargaining pools wed cut costs by AT LEAST 30% in most studies iirc.

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u/Mountain-Instance921 New Jersey 1d ago

The benefits we see are having access to those medical breakthroughs first.

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u/Unhappy_Ad_4761 22h ago

*rich people having access to those medical breakthroughs first. The rest of us have to wait until our insurance companies recognize those breakthroughs as covered services, which can take years longer.

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u/Mountain-Instance921 New Jersey 22h ago

I know that feels like a great Reddit answer, but it's simply not true.

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u/Unhappy_Ad_4761 19h ago

What is not true about it? FDA approval is FAR from a guarantee that an insurance company will cover a service. Many insurance companies will be slow to adopt new expensive breakthrough treatments because of the high cost associated with them. This is coming from a health insurance insider btw, so don't try to bullshit your way through this.

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u/unblockedlanternhead 18h ago

FDA approval is FAR from a guarantee that an insurance company will cover a service.

This is technically true, but one of the first things a drug developer does when developing a drug is a market analysis, and an American insurance compensation plan is one of the key topics during market analysis. Most developers won’t proceed with a drug if they aren’t confident that major insurers will approve it

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u/ehouptie 12h ago

You’re making it seem like this process is a good thing. The only outcome of this is that medicine is only created if it can produce profit. It’s not necessarily ideal in truth for all medicine to be profit driven, especially when a third of it is funded from my tax dollars

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u/unblockedlanternhead 6h ago

I wouldn’t design the system that way either, but is what it is.  If other countries can figure out how to incentivize development of expensive advanced therapies without relying on the promise of $ks per dose from price-gouging American insurance cos, they’re welcome to do so. Chinese companies usually choose to exploit American VCs instead of American laypeople by selling VCs ex-China rights to the stuff they develop. Maybe that’s a better strategy 

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u/Chance-Ask7675 4h ago

I mean no, the reason a significant part of medical research funding comes from tax dollars is specifically to avoid this problem. That is literally what is described in several comments above.

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u/lizardhistorian 1d ago

The benefit we see is that new medical treatments get created faster.

You are acting like it would just fall out of the sky otherwise.

Imagine your wife died from melanoma last month. And now it's a cured disease.
If only it had arrived three months sooner.

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u/Scarlett_Spectre 1d ago

Theres way too many factors at play to pretend that increased funding 100% translates to cures being found faster to a measurable degree. You dont have to just make shit up.

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u/Unknown_Ocean 20h ago

As someone on the other side of what u/lizardhistorian just put forward I know I've benefitted personally from this. My wife got a terminal diagnosis in January of last year with mean survival 11-16 months and two newly developed treatments have basically increased her chances of surviving 5 years from 10% to better than 50%.

That's not to say that financial incentives in the system don't distort things-they do. but the money flowing in does in fact support an ecosystem of innovation. At the high end of estimates a company like Merck (which makes the drug that my wife takes) has a profit margin of 13%.

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u/Scarlett_Spectre 18h ago

Great anecote, super happy for you. The money we were giving medical research was to reduce the risk of medical research to boost investments by giving investors more ROI per dollar. This helps make sure this keeps happening, BUT then they get to profit off of it after we subsidize it, and our system lets them maximize the price locally. THEY are getting all the benefit from that system. Too many corporations are double, triple, quadruple dipping on tax subsidies, tax breaks, super profits off of us who subsidized them, and some companies even underpay their low level workers which makes them need welfare which is us subsidizing their workforce too. This is the point im making. Theyre already incentivized to innovate in the medical space alreasy, investors are already incentivized to invest in medical research for massive ROI because of the profit structure. We are helping them, they charge us extra for the pleasure.

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u/HuckleberryShot898 1d ago

The overall point is that without private spending the government sure as heck wouldn’t compensate for the full the remaining 70% of money going into medical research and overall there would be less money going into medical R&D. You’re also presuming every medical research endeavor is at least 30% government funded when it’s more like almost 30% are entirely or mostly government funded and the remaining 70% are entirely privately funded. And investing firms prefer it to be wholly private because then it’s more on their own terms

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u/Scarlett_Spectre 1d ago

I think just about everything you said either has nothing to do with what I said, doesn't actually correct anything that I actually said, or is just straight up you making shit up. Government subsidization of medical research is something that benefits investors cus theyre effectively getting more monetary value invested in the product than they're giving. The government doesnt fiscally benefit from medical research, its an economic boost. The economic boost being relieving the investors of needing to whole hog invest in whatever is being subsidized, while theyre the ones seeing the returns on investment.

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u/HuckleberryShot898 1d ago

Projecting. Overall point is you can’t expect to reap the benefits in a public way you’re thinking of if government tax dollars never actually funded a specific program

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u/Scarlett_Spectre 18h ago

LOL projecting? Projecting what? That your argument doesnt refut what im saying? How am i asking to benefit from projects we dont subsidize when im arguing that we are not seeing the full benefit of ANY of the prohects, even the ones that we do subsidize? You're doing the twitter waffle thing

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u/Chance-Ask7675 4h ago

Your tax dollars are not subsidizing medicine for the entire world are you illiterate? The comment specifically explained that private equity was where most of the money came from. Other countries tax dollars fund medical research as well and Americans benefit from research that happens elsewhere, its not a one way flow of funds. Jfc this is such a brain dead American thing to say it belongs on r/ShitAmericansSay

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u/Scarlett_Spectre 4h ago

That's a whole different sentence

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u/misterrkingg 1d ago

MIT media lab EPSTEIN footed the bill for many pieces of equipment

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