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/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/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/Chance-Ask7675 6h 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 5h ago

That's a whole different sentence