I'm not sure if you're following this (as I'm slow to respond - different time zone and not online all day)... but...

Hmm. Can you point out the "constitutional preference for free markets" in the actual constitution? Actually, doesn't really matter. The consensus around the world is a preference for free markets, so that's not really unique to the U.S.

But most people (including most people in the U.S., as near as I can tell) acknowledge that free markets have limitations. In this case, the key elements for a well functioning market that are missing are competition and an informed consumer. People are simply very poor at judging risk, so they don't know what insurance is really worth to them. They also don't understand the legalese of insurance contracts, so they might not be purchasing what they think they are. A competitive market in insurance is difficult to maintain because economies of scale are so important in the insurance industry - the more customers you have, the better you can spread risk. So you can open up markets to interstate competition (not a bad idea as long as it's properly regulated), but that will just end up with consolidation - the insurance companies will just buy each other up until there are only two or three left.

I fail to see how any of the measures in the U.S. health care bill, or for that matter any of the real "socialized" health care systems in the world, affect incentives for R&D. You're making the assertion that the bill goes "WELL beyond just changing the way health care is delivered", but as I understand it, the bill doesn't change how health care is delivered at all. The change is limited to how health care is paid for (consumer-side rather than supply-side).

To make you case convincing you need to demonstrate that somehow the American health INSURANCE industry encourages R&D. The evidence that you brought before, that so much medical R&D happens in the U.S., doesn't really make your case.

I could just as easily argue the opposite. If the 30% or so (from memory - but I can try to find a link if you like) of overhead that goes to the insurance industry in the U.S. were spent on health care, then there would be more money for actual treatment and more of that money could go into research.

Ack. Hard to read your post because it's all one paragraph. But you start with an assertion that's demonstrably false, so it tends to undermine anything else you say that might have merit.

First, the biggest funder of medical research in the U.S. and throughout the world is government. That's not likely to change regardless of how health care is provided.

Second, even the Cato study (which you're probably referring to) found that 40 percent of what they termed "innovations" happened in countries with "socialized medicine". Now I haven't researched the details of the study (though I tend to be very suspicious of anything Cato writes), but I think it's plausible that the U.S. contributes more than its fair share to medical science. I would need evidence aside from Cato, but I wouldn't be all that surprised if it were true.

But even if I were to accept that, it doesn't follow that this is due to the American health care system. There are at least two confounding factors that I can think of right off the top of my head:

1. The market for medical research is global. American companies that do R&D sell their products all over the world. While the U.S. is a huge market, it's still only a fraction of the global market, so there's no reason to believe that Americans paying less for health care would significantly reduce investment in R&D.

2. While Americans do pay more than anybody else for health care, most of that goes into insurance industry overhead. It would be interesting to know how much of the additional money paid by Americans for health care actually goes into research, but it's clearly not a huge amount.

From what I gather following the debate from Europe, Americans seems to be unable to look at this issue realistically. Free markets are good, in general, but they have problems. If you assume that free markets are always the best solution then you're taking an idealogical position when what's really called for is a careful examination of the actual problem at hand.

Correct. I did read it.

Actually most criticism comes from users. True, they're not "detached observer"s, but I don't see a lot of that in any part of the industry. The people who bother to criticise something generally do so because they have some stake in it.

Maybe he's referring to journalists, who are paid to at least appear objective. But I've seen lots of reviews of Linux stuff (including Ubuntu), and they point out both the good and the bad.

Er, no, I really have no problem with criticism of Linux. The article is strange because he thinks there's a currently a lack of criticism, whereas I see tons of it everywhere.

Somehow the author seems to have missed the copious blog posts, mailing list messages, software reviews, and competitor astroturf all criticising Linux.

Indeed. What a strange article.

I would even go so far as to say that Linux (and the Free Software ecosystem that surrounds it) has a lot more critics than closed software - or at least more effective critics.

Large software companies pay PR departments to generate positive coverage. Most Open Source projects have no PR effort behind them at all. So criticism of the software is less likely to be drowned out by astroturf.