I'm sure the outcome fits the "big brother"/"nanny state" narative but this is just the result of the freedom of citizens to choose cashless transactions.
The process of doing a qualitative study (a board talking to leading scientists) and then determining the value to "reset" the clock, resulting in a fine-grained quantitative measure seems unlikely to produce consistency over 75 years. If this is science (the clock is set by "scientists" after all), then it is no wonder people don't get vaccinated.
If your "interest" is rounded down and so less than 1 cent, how can that even qualify as stealing?
You pay market prices for drugs and provide big profits for pharmaceutical companies to develop and profit from those drugs. Our public monopoly purchasing system ensures that if a drug company wants its drug prescribed in volume in my country, they need to cut a very good deal on the price. Your market even encourages competition, meaning we can play companies off each other to get the best deal on similar products.
No doubt this happens in other areas such as equipment too.
So thank you USA for ensuring that drug and medical companies profit from you and we can squeeze them on price for our entire market. Please don't change.
Luck, that's when preparation and opportunity meet. -- P.E. Trudeau