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Originally Posted by Texan
I was thinking of Canada and Sweden. I'm not really sure if Cuba does any medical research. Probably not.
The 90 percent of medicines actually means 90 percent of medical research that produces effective medications/drugs to treat medical issues. Perhaps I was not clear. I don't mean just making capsule with chemicals inside that someone invented or discovered 50 years ago.
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OK, you're right I should have spelt this out, even though Manson, Phang and JBG have both alluded to my point. Imagine I said :
"90% of crimes in America were comitted within 25 miles of a police station, despite most people thinking that police help reduce crime!"
Would this be meaningful? Would it be a damning indictment of the police? Or would it totally depend on a whole range of factors? What if it was then shown that 98% of the US population lived within 25 miles of a police station. What would that mean?
Then there's the other issues which have already been raised. Sweden and Britain might have "socialist" medical systems in your terms, but at least in the UK, the NHS does not (on the whole) develop new drugs. That is left to private drug companies (e.g. Glaxo-Smithkline/whatever) - the NHS usually buy them. So it's a silly comparison. It's like saying 90% of fires in the UK are put out by state fire services, not by private industry. This is irrelevent because it is not the job (usually) of private companies to put out fires.
And Cuba does develop medical treatments. They actually punch above their weight in bio-medical research and at least one UK company is working with the Cuban's on some sort of treatment (possibly for Meningitis, I forget now).