Not the first time you've heard this: "A FOR-PROFIT HEALTHCARE SYSTEM DOESN'T WORK"

[Roy Rolling]

That guy Jesse on Wall Street said it, and this time a light went off in my head. It was a tipping point for me so I'll repeat it: "A FOR-PROFIT HEALTHCARE SYSTEM DOESN'T WORK"

[librechik]

1. doesn't work and is immoral and discriminatory n/t

[Avalux]

2. Of course it doesn't. Capitalism and the human right to treatment of illness don't mix.

"I'm sorry, you don't have any money or insurance. I can't give you this life-saving drug because you can't pay for it and now you're going to die".

That's the gist of it....

[qb]

3. Waddayamean? It works just fine for the wealthy.

:sarcasm:

[TBF]

4. We are so far behind other industrialized countries - we need single payer yesterday. nt

[jtrockville]

5. Of COURSE it works. In fact IT WORKS GREAT (for the profit-takers)

Not so much for those seeking health care.

[prairierose]

6. For-profit- health- care is immoral and obscene.....n/t

[Prophet 451]

7. It CAN work....

...but only when there is a not-for-profit alternative in place. What you have right now is what's called a "captive market". That means that you cannot remove yourself from the market for this good/service without massive inconvienience and/or great risk to your health (this is also true of power, mail and a couple of other sectors). Because we all need those goods/services and we need them all the time (or, at least, the option of them), the providers of those goods and services can game the system, keeping prices within a few dollars of each other in the knowledge that you cannot remove yourself from that market entirely.

However, when a not-for-profit alternative exists, it provides a "backstop", creating a bottom floor of goods/service-for-price below which one cannot be competative. I call this the "backstop theory" of economics. For example, in my own UK, we have the National Health Service (caveat before I go any further: the NHS is not perfect and no-one should tell you it is). Here, we still have for-profit healthcare companies (BUPA, for example) BUT because the NHS provides the "backstop", companies must be significantly better at something to compete with it. Any company which cannot at least match the NHS for service cannot compete and so, goes out of business. And so, in those circumstances, a for-profit healthcare system can work because you aren't reliant on it. It's when sectors which you are reliant on are operated for a profit, that's when people start being sacrificed to the profit margin.

[unblock]

8. a free market inherently includes the right to say, "no, i won't provide these goods or services".

if we're talking about luxury yachts, then fine, why should anyone in the luxury yacht business be forced to sell at unprofitable prices? there's nothing immoral about saying "sorry, i know you want a luxury yacht, but i want more of a profit, and you're too poor, so you'll have to suffer without that luxury yacht."

but in the health care business, this means saying "sorry, i know you want a life-saving surgery, but i want more of a profit, and you're too poor, so you'll have to suffer without that life-saving surgery." that's literally saying that i'm going to let you die because ultimately i make more money that way. that's every bit as immoral as what a hitman does.

obviously, the two examples have nearly no moral similarity, but right-wingers insist on evoking the moral imagery from the first example and applying it to the market in the second example.


in the luxury sense, a for-profit medical market can work for LUXURY medical procedures such as vanity plastic surgery (as opposed to reparatory plastic surgery after an accident, e.g.) a poor person wanting a facelift is starting to look more like the first example than the second. fine, let those procedure be for-profit.

but anything medically NECESSARY should not be effectively closed to ANY american.

[eppur_se_muova]

9. It worked back when there wasn't that much doctors could do.

As the methods of treatment -- and even diagnosis -- came to be more and more high-tech, high-value-added products of highly specialized industries, AND they became increasingly effective at extending the lives of the critically ill, medicine just became too valuable to be left to the free market.

Capitalism is fine in the middle ground, but just doesn't work for the transcendently valuable -- such as a human life -- or the trivial.