

I have mixed feelings on this. If the entire world had access to free healthcare, chances are research and development would grind to a halt unless they also funded research and development. Taxpayers would need to be willing to pay a company hundreds of millions of dollars if they discovered a useful product.
…it can work in theory, but I’m not sure if it would work in a democracy. The average voter would demand that money be spent on more immediately useful services. If it did work, however, we would save the billions of dollars pharmaceutical companies spend on lawyers and marketing.


You could fund the facilities, but how many people would be willing to get a doctorate in biological chemistry if the only available jobs were relatively low paying civil servants?
Most of the researchers in the pharmaceutical industry were employed as minimum wage workers during their six years in college. We would have to completely overhaul the incentive structure if we expected colleges to replace the for profit industry.