At the Democratic primary debate on Thursday night, Bernie Sanders asserted that the pharmaceutical industry is defined by "greed, corruption, and price-fixing."

Oh, really?

Don't get me wrong, the U.S. pharmaceutical industry should face export price floors so that Europeans and others around the world don't "free ride" off Americans. But is Bernie right? Is he really telling the truth when he says that the medical innovation industry, pharmaceutical companies included, are basically evil?

I suggest that he is not.

Bernie Sanders proposes a socialist "Medicare for all" system that would at least provide healthcare access to everyone. But let me ask you something: Do you like maggots?

I ask that question because maggots and antibiotics can achieve the same object, cleaning a wound, only people prefer antibiotics and they work better.

The point may seem silly, but it speaks to the critical importance of innovation. American pharmaceutical companies are responsible for the vast majority of new drugs because they have a profit motive driving them to engage in high-risk research.

That point also matters is that America's healthcare system, though grossly inefficient and thus overpriced, is the best in the world. Cancer patients go out of their way to come here if they have money, and part of the issue is that the connection between revenue and provision of care isn't incidental.

Bernie's plan would transfer the current system's robust system of patient choices away from many people into the hands of a few. The choices would all fall to bureaucrats. And when the revenue supply available to the bureaucrats starts declining, their choices will inevitably become less about the patients and more about limiting care.

That's why the Soviet Union had a lot of apartment blocks and nuclear power plants, but not very good ones. In the end, socialist systems alter the calculation of costs and people away from what's good for people. Thus, we must ask ourselves a question: Do we wish for a healthcare system in which 80% of the population have the best healthcare in the world, and the other 20% at least have avenues to good care? Or do we wish for bureaucratic domination and an end to medical innovation?