Posted 4 years ago mid-morning by oso
Note, this post is the third in a series. Here are the first and second.
Then Kevin dropped me off at Saffron where I was meeting my dad for a late Father’s Day dinner. It was the first time I had seen him in months. I was worried we were gonna fall into talking over the same skit: how’s work?, how’s your sister?, so do you have any plans for your future yet?
And yeah that’s how it started, but then - after I gulped down a Sapporo - we started talking about whether or not university professors should be allowed leave the university with their patents and start up private companies.
I should give you a primer. My father, technically my step-father, technically technically my ex-step-father if such a thing exists, is a scientist. He got his Ph.D. in Oceanography from Woods Hole. I think his thesis was on the reproductive cycle of lobsters or something equally esoteric. The only story of his I remember from his grad school days are that a fellow student invented imitation crab - the stuff in california rolls - but wasn’t awarded his doctorate because it didn’t benefit society, only sushi chefs. He did lab research for public universities until he set out to do what most do by the time they reach their 30’s: make money. And as biotech boomed so did his career and salary and that’s how I ended up down here in San Diego. He’s a closet conservative with an affinity for the slightly neurotic which means he feigns liberal.
Like most scientific entrepreneurs, he’s a business conservative - so it’s not an aristocracy he’s after but innovation. What breeds innovation, what makes things most efficient - that’s what guides his policy. So obviously his argument was that professors should be able to start companies with their research patents because it provides a financial motive for professors to engage in profitable research.
Profitable research? Profitable research is Prozac. Sleeping pills are profitable. As is Viagra. Profitable research is turning mice into super athletes that never tire as two biologists right down the road from me published a few weeks ago. Profitable research, however, is not curing malaria, nor hunger, nor any tropical disease - because victims of those diseases don’t have the money to pay thousands for the drugs. And I argued to my father that more university professors should be researching that which benefits society best, not their own pockets.
This got us into a discussion not only about university research, but also national health care … and our lack of it. I’m all for national health care. Not only national health care, but also nationalized biotechnology and pharmacology. My father’s reaction was like most when I tell them I think the biotech sector should be nationalized - that I’m an irrational red Commie. "You can’t trust the government with something like that; they wouldn’t know how to handle it. Besides, investors wouldn’t invest in what wouldn’t make them money and scientists wouldn’t work so hard if they weren’t going to be rewarded."
Well, he’s right that investors wouldn’t invest in what wouldn’t make them money. And this is one of the more obvious of capitalism’s flaws. The only time you’ll see non-profitable research into a disease is when a wealthy philanthropist’s kid comes down with the disease. Or when NIH - a government agency - offers grants into research which aids society, not investors.
It is for this reason that Cuba - one of the poorest countries I’ve been to - is on top of the list as far as statistical health of its people. Now, I’m no fan of Cuba’s form of government or widespread censorship, but it just goes to show how such an impoverished nation can take better care of its citizens’ health through intelligent health care policy which - though not as profitable for individual investors - is more efficient overall.
Pops gave me a ride back to the house and agreed that while he’s still opposed to full government control, maybe the NIH should have a bit more say in encouraging non-profitable research.
Maybe he’s right. Sometimes governments can be as illogical and heartless with where they put their money as individual investors. I mean just look what most NIH grants are for these days: responses to chemical/biological terrorist attacks. Meanwhile a third of Zimbabwe and Zambia is dying of AIDS and Malaria - though rarely discussed is still the number two cause of death in the world’s largest continent. And despite all my constant shit-talking on Microsoft, it’s quite possible that the Gates Foundation will have a bigger impact on the fight against AIDS than the entire United States government.
It’s a tough policy decision, but in general I’m much more inclined to trust a democratic government than a venture capitalist to care for the common person. Which is why proposition 72 is so important - it would finally require
"companies [in California] with 200 or more employees to buy health insurance for workers and their families by 2006. Firms with 50 to 199 employees are required to buy coverage for their employees starting in 2007. A YES vote on Proposition 72 will approve the Health Insurance Act, while a NO vote will repeal it."
Of course California business owners are against the proposition and even threatening to leave California if they’re required to offer their employees health insurance. This is the classic race to the bottom model of globalization - that worker’s living conditions will suffer by businesses moving to where workers will ask for less. It’s a reversal of everything the American labor movement has worked for over the the past three centuries. What’s next? Are they gonna ask to take away the weekend because hungry workers in Sri Lanka say they’ll do without it? We have to call their bluff. Moving out of California would be way too costly an endeavor for any of the businesses. In fact, what they don’t understand is that providing their employees health insurance is actually in their own interest since it keeps them healthy, happy, at work, and more productive.
A couple bloggers have been writing about health care lately. Mari wrote that - jobless - her health insurance has sky-rocketed to what many Midwesterners pay for rent. Luis cites a report entitled Heath Care: Are you better off today than four years ago? which as you could guess, most replied no.
Like most workers at my job, I don’t have any health care coverage. When a co-worker got into a nasty accident a couple weeks ago - her car flipping over onto its back - she was nearly knocked unconscious and yet the one thing she told the ambulance driver is that she didn’t want a ride to the hospital because she couldn’t afford it. I would have done the same thing … and that’s just not right. All you Californians, please vote Yes on Proposition 72.
Pops dropped me off at the house. Laura was waiting for me upstairs. We read a little bit and went to sleep early - the following morning we had to wake up early to take the trolley down to Tijuana to pick up her little sister who was flying in from Torreon.
The story about your friend at work illusrates why the country needs to move to universal Health Care once and for all, and the best way to do that is through the ballot box.
Heh… remind me to send you my notebook from the Science and Tech Policy course I took last year, Osito; I think you’d find it interesting, if you manage to follow my very non-linear style of note-taking.
Ultimately, after poring over government stats and budgetary analysis and (DHS)ARPA white papers–I tend to agree more with your ex-step-father on this one. Not necessarily because I’m against National Healthcare (I love the idea, in theory) or because I think a concerted national effort to cure AIDS/Cancer/Diabetes is unrealistic–but because I’ve studied how our government sets science and tech policy, and I’m positive they’d screw it up. If the government had continued to develop Internet policy after the people at ARPA invented it–I’m positive the Web wouldn’t be what it is today. Simply put–our legislators really know too little about science to exercise any kind of effective control or guidance over a nationalized science/health/tech system.
If they did–trust me, we wouldn’t have the sort of half-ass policy towards global warming that we currently do. Congress, especially, uses science as turf, not as a tool–but the Executive Branch and the Courts haven’t been much better.
If you’re interested, here’s a history of the Internet, which mentions ARPA’s place in it.
I think I’m with Elenita on this one. The government is about the only entity on earth that is more inept than the medical field in making healthcare decisions. When you say you are more inclined to trust a democratic government than a venture capitalist, it’s easy to agree with you. But then I ask you to point to the democratic institution that you would rely on. The NIH? Democratic how? These organizations are so removed from the people that need their help (especially internationaly) that they are no where near democratic, even were the govenment that created them to be construed as such - a longshot in and of itself. Instead of requiring companies to pay for healthcare why not end all government subsidies to said companies and put that money towards the healthcare of the citizens? The whole cycle of taxing and subsidizing makes no sense and only creates wasteful inefficiencies through bloated bureaucracies.
First of all, Amen for requiring that businesses provide health insurance, and I will vote accordingly, although arguably this should be the responsibility of governments, as y’all are debating, since we do pay taxes. I think that we can legislate the conduct of business a lot more than we do without succumbing to threats of outsourcing etc. For starters, we could require that if corporations want to do business in CA, or the US for that matter, they (1) provide health insurance, (2) pay a living wage according to some formula based on the gross national product of each country where they have employees, and even that (3) if they are traded in US Stock markets or have American CEOs/governing boards, they have to employ X proportion of US workers at local wages, and why not (4) cap their profit margin at 300% … (5) what else would you like? Pipe dream? We are, after all, the largest consumer economy in the world. Hell, CA alone is among the 10th largest. Who doesn’t want to do business with us? Who else is going to buy those Hummers? (not THOSE hummers) …those greedy bastards…
About the NIH…you should know that “The Government” plays a certain role in setting the research agenda (like conservatives in congress –-including Rep Duncan Hunter from my own 91942, to whom I write respectful diatribes a couple of times a year– trying to de-fund programs that study topics that are “outside the main stream” [read gay issues, stem cells…] but ultimately the NIH is run by scientists, who, while they have to beg and account to the congress, they thankfully call upon experts to tell them that what direction research should take in any given area. Please visit if you haven’t been: http://www.nih.gov/icd/
In particular, you may be interested in knowing that there is a great deal of interest in international collaborations and technology transfer in research methods and health care with less developed nations. AIDS certainly gets a good share of funding. See e.g.,
Office of AIDS Research,
http://www.nih.gov/od/oar/
and
John E. Fogarty International Center (FIC) - Est. 1968
http://www.fic.nih.gov/
And finally, my own wages are a testament that scientists more often than not work for the greater good at a significant cost to their own retirement accounts (well, I’m not sure that I’m doing any good, but I do work for cheap).
I would trust scientists themselves to make decisions on their own research infinitely more than either the government (democratic or not) or the companies analyzing their bottom lines. In this sense, it is a good thing that the NIH is detached (somewhat) from government control.
The problem with forcing businesses to pay for health insurance is that they will inevitably defer these costs to their clients or consumers or their employees by some other means. It seems to me to be a patch in the dam, covering the symptoms of a larger problem. But if its the best we can do at the moment then so be it.
Elenita,
I’m not so sure about your example of how the NSF dealt with the internet in regards to National Health Care and greater NIH funding of research.
The (mis?)development of the internet is interesting, but has much more to do with communications policy than health care.
So what we’re talking about here is funding. A scientist just gets her Ph.D. in Chemisty and is looking for a job. She can do something meaningful - like AIDS research - and work for a center that is dependent on NIH grants for funding or she can take a job with a start up biotech company that is dependent on investors to make something like Viagra.
Obviously the second job will pay two to three times as much as the first. And as a result some of the brightest researchers are letting AIDS take its devestating toll while making dicks hard the world over.
Obviously I don’t know enough about how NIH works nor how its funding is decided, but as a voter I would support more NIH funding that would come directly from any pharmaceutical company that makes more than a 200% profit margin. That’s right … any profit over that margin would go directly to NIH funding.
Furthermore I would propose a 0.25% international tax based on GNP for all member nations of the World Health Organization.
Abogado,
If that means you’re in favor of a National Health Care system then I agree with you, but until that happens I think Prop 72 is a step in the right direction and I surely wouldn’t vote against it solely because it’s not enough.
Great reading, keep up the great posts.
Peace, JiggaDigga