I&#x27;ve seen this argument before, from someone arguing against universal health care in the US in general, and Obamacare in particular. I said that one advantage of socialized medicine is cost, and they came back with this: it&#x27;s only cheap because we pay for all their R&amp;D.<p>Except then I ran the numbers, and it turns out that medical R&amp;D in the US amounts to only about $500 per person per year, while the gap in costs is many thousands of dollars.<p>Perhaps it is you who does not realize how much of it (i.e. not that much) is subsidized by Americans.