One foot in the grave for ObamaCare in 11th Circuit

HEARTLESS wrote: Please point out the vast medical improvements of your beloved nations on the list, and to keep it simple use the top five. Did they create the ct scan, MRI or even most drugs to treat illness? NO! Most all occurred here because of capitalism, our superior medical training and our ingenuity.

CT SCAN

The Cat Scan was invented in 1972 by British engineer Godfrey Hounsfield of EMI Laboratories, England and by South Africa-born physicist Allan Cormack of Tufts University, Massachusetts. Hounsfield and Cormack were later awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their contributions to medicine and science.

The MRI was first invented by researchers at Stanford University using public funding back in 1930. The use of MRI for medical purposes was then developed by Raymond Damiadian in 1970 at Southern University of New York using public funding. Lauterbur, a research scientist at Stanford and Mansfield, a research scientist at University of Nottingham, England are credited with creating the first practical imaging system using MRI, both using public funding.

And much of these medical innovations are made by the evil, tax evading, no good people at General Electric.

Based on research at universities and public research facilities. It has been common practice for large corporations to take research from publicly funded labs and commercialize that research rather than to create the inventions themselves.

Without publicly funded research, technology would be much less advanced.

And if the patents for the advances had been secured by the funding entities instead of the researchers, why we might actually have received a public benefit for the advances achieved through the dispensing of public funds for the research. Oh sure, we get a benefit from a better imaging system, that we have to pay for consuming in addition to paying for the cost of the research. Perhaps the best way for the federal government to actually have a chance of bringing the cost of care down, or at least reducing the amount of taxes that have to be levied and collected for that purpose, would be to require any person who accepts money from it for their research to turn over all rights to the results of that research to the federal government so that, like oil, the federal government could collect their royalties in kind (use of the equipment for treatment of the poor and elderly) instead of allowing the people who conducted the research to hold the patents and license the use of the technology to the companies that build the actual machines.

Nah - they'd find a way to screw that up too...........

Capitalism by it's definition requires an immediate payback, thus most corporations, particularly in the last 30 years do not take changes on attempting to develop technology that may not immediately turn a profit. Publicly funded research on the other hand often allows for creativity and developing technology in esoteric areas that may take decades if at all to become commercial. Universities and public research facilities have long been the bastion of developing emerging technology.

PrintSmith wrote: And if the patents for the advances had been secured by the funding entities instead of the researchers, why we might actually have received a public benefit for the advances achieved through the dispensing of public funds for the research. Oh sure, we get a benefit from a better imaging system, that we have to pay for consuming in addition to paying for the cost of the research. Perhaps the best way for the federal government to actually have a chance of bringing the cost of care down, or at least reducing the amount of taxes that have to be levied and collected for that purpose, would be to require any person who accepts money from it for their research to turn over all rights to the results of that research to the federal government so that, like oil, the federal government could collect their royalties in kind (use of the equipment for treatment of the poor and elderly) instead of allowing the people who conducted the research to hold the patents and license the use of the technology to the companies that build the actual machines.

Nah - they'd find a way to screw that up too...........

So you advocating that the federal government get into the business of commercializing technology in competition with the private sector. Instead the federal government partners with the private sector by directing research into areas with a public need by providing money to private sectors, rather than invest long term into building new facilities hiring researchers etc. The federal government did and does retain ownership in any patents that are obtained from inventions that were funded all or partly by public money. Prior to 1980, those patents were available for licensing on a non-exclusive basis, thus the federal government was doing exactly what you are desiring. However, this created problems with small businesses and non-profits (universities) trying to commercialize this research as it was difficult to find capital to invest for commercialization if their competitors could simply license the same technology from the federal government. Thus the Bayh Dole act of 1980 allows small businesses and non-profits to retain exclusivity of the technology as long as they meet certain conditions, i.e., be able to commercialize, get it into the marketplace in a reasonable amount of time so that the taxpayers get the benefit of the research, etc. Large companies still must allow the government to license (and keep the royalties) of any research using federal dollars.

I do not understand your problems with this public/private system of cooperation.