Hey EZscience, great to see you posting again!
Thanks. I have been so tied up with writing at work I haven't had the time to write for fun in a while.
Yes, I agree with everything you say.
I have been observing all these unfortunate trends here that only seemed to really gather momentum over the past 5 years under the Bush administration. I have been a researcher working in the US since 1996 so I am actually one of those foreign scientists you speak of - if Canadian can be considered 'foreign'.
What you say about private sector investment in the sciences is true, but only one side of the coin. There is a also lot of important science that will only get done if it is sponsored by the government because it doesn't lead to patents or anything you can profit from. This type of research is suffering even more from neglect. Our present government is gutting funding for basic research of the type that stands to most benefit the public.
To tie this into the health care issue (and keep this all on topic), what we see in medical research is private sector investment in drug development to the point where that is now the predominant type of medical research. Who is going to develop preventive medicine if the government doesn't fund it? No money to be made off that, is there? Much more profitable to let big corporations sell people toxic processed foods and then charge them an arm and a leg for treatment when they get sick. Now that we have mostly doctors whose exclusive approach to healing is to prescribe drugs - the real beneficiary is big pharma - not the patients.
You are also right that the government is really shooting itself in the foot by making it so difficult for foreign scientists to study and work here. I actually answered a survey from the NSF on what steps I thought could be taken to induce more American students into graduate science programs and among the alternatives to choose from was that we should make it more difficult for foreign students to study here (!!??). My response was, What are you guys trying to do - shut down my research program? I have never had more than 5% of applicants for an assistantship who were remotely qualified Americans. So yes, we appear to be neither providing the quality of public education, nor the appropriate incentives, for encouraging the production of home-grown scientists, while at the same time making it more difficult for international scientists to study here. It does not bode well for the future - and I am still a long way from retirement !
Somehow we need to reawaken the public respect for science and scientists that the American public had back int he 50's. Now it seems science and all its public benefits are taken for granted by a very uninformed and uneducated general public. I am at a loss to understand why more people can't see that reliance on religious doctrine running counter to science is a slippery path backwards into the dark ages.