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Taking your premise to it's logical conclusion, shouldn't the making of profits result in your system being better? Maybe, using your logic; removing whatever restraints remain to hospitals, doctors & insurance carriers charging usurious amounts would therefore improve things?
There are already non-profit insurers and hospitals. Kaiser Permanente is non-profit, some of the Blue Cross insurers are non-profit. Here in Houston, hospitals like Methodist, Memorial-Hermann, and CHI St Lukes are non-profit. MD Anderson Cancer center is operated by the University of Texas, so is essentially a non-profit. All of those entities are though of as great hospitals, and Kaiser is one of the most respected health care programs in the country. All with no profit motive. As non-profit and tax exempt entities, their IRS filings are public, so you can see how much money they receive and how much is spent, as well as the salaries of the officers. Far more transparency than for profit entities. guidestar.org has links to the tax returns for non-profits. I think the IRS does as well, but Guidestar usually has more information besides the form 990's
I don't know that an entity was ever forced to become non-profit, but I don't care if Aetna and the other for profit insurers disappear, they are generally horrible, and do their best to not pay for anything. At least, that's been my experience.
There is a difference between a BUSINESS that sets itself up to be a non-profit and it did based upon certain considerations that probably were not privy to the rest of us.
But that is not what you want. Instead of a single business, you want to force an INDUSTRY and at least in your mind, you forced that without considering the consequences. Who/what prevents you from doing the same to individual professionals, from specialists to GP to nurses? Now it is health care, what/who prevents you from moving to food since food is directly related to health? You can force farmers to operate their industry as nonprofit for the EXACT reasons in health care.
Taking your premise to it's logical conclusion, shouldn't the making of profits result in your system being better? Maybe, using your logic; removing whatever restraints remain to hospitals, doctors & insurance carriers charging usurious amounts would therefore improve things?
Yet I can get a subscription to Primary Care for $60 a month for myself, which includes unlimited preventative office visits, that can be terminated any time I want. An office visit with an in-network doctor with BlueCross costs the insurer $200 a pop.
One is subject to the forces of the free market. The other isn't.
Real quick...stop with the deifying of "non-profit" as some noble benevolent thing. Minus tax incentives and perception, the only real difference between for profit and non-profit is that profits in the former are directed as shareholders decide, and in the latter, profits are absorbed back into the business...ALMOST ALWAYS AS HIGHER COMPENSATION FOR THE SENIOR EMPLOYEES.
Example:
ForProfit Corp_01 makes a $10 million profit for FY2020. That profit is partially reinvested into the business, operating cash flow, pay down some outstanding debts and the remainder is simply divided among shareholders as dividends, stock option grants, actual cash payments, etc.
NonProfit Corp_02 makes a $10 million profit for FY2020. That profit is partially reinvested into the business, operating cash flow, pay down some outstanding debts and the remainder is simply divided among senior employees as increased salary.
Non-profits make profit and the senior employees make more money when they do. It is functionally no different from For Profit, minus nomenclature and public perception.
If non-profits make no profit, then explain why so many big non-profits have senior execs who makes $millions?
Because those executives have to be compensated on a similar basis to for profit entities, or they won't work for the non-profit. It's the same reason that school districts have to pay positions like CFO, CIO, and such fairly high salaries - the non-profits, school districts, etc are competing with private businesses for management talent. The non-profits can't grant stock, or stock options, but can create performance incentives that are appropriate. They just won't be based on return on assets or profit margin.
Because those executives have to be compensated on a similar basis to for profit entities, or they won't work for the non-profit. It's the same reason that school districts have to pay positions like CFO, CIO, and such fairly high salaries - the non-profits, school districts, etc are competing with private businesses for management talent. The non-profits can't grant stock, or stock options, but can create performance incentives that are appropriate. They just won't be based on return on assets or profit margin.
Huh...so it's as if...as if...non-profits do indeed make profit as well as making their executive class rich as hell...but since they label it differently...it's better somehow.
That's the thing though - the profit motive isn't notorious. It's the most effective, powerful tool for human progress in the history of civilization.
Everyone benefits from trade, and the more profitable trade can be, the more people will do it, thus the more they benefit in the long term.
Profit being a dirty word is literally the #1 most insidious evil ever perpetrated by Leviathan's attempts at social engineering.
Riiiiight, because Enron's efforts to make more profit by screwing grandma with high power prices were such a good thing. Or companies that increase profits by dumping toxic chemicals in a river instead of paying for proper disposal.
Profit is fine for most businesses. I don't think it has a place in health care, because of the perverse incentives it creates to shortchange health outcomes. I've seen that personally, where Aetna did not want to pay for proton therapy for my sinus cancer, but would pay for conventional radiation. Conventional radiation ion that situation would increase my risk of blindness and cognitive issues by several thousand percent, while proton had no such risk. Aetna just didn't want to pay the extra 50% that proton costs.
Huh...so it's as if...as if...non-profits do indeed make profit as well as making their executive class rich as hell...but since they label it differently...it's better somehow.
Uh huh.
OK, how much do you think the CEO of an entity with revenues of, say, $2.5 billion and 14,000 employees makes? That's the numbers for The Methodist Hospital Group in Houston. The CEO made $3.5 million in 2019. That doesn't sound unreasonable to me, keeping in mind that doctors overall are among the more highly compensated people in the US.
Anyone who thinks employees of non-profits should be compensated less than similar positions in business, simply because it's a non-profit, aren't thinking rationally. The operating surpluses of non-profits are what help pay for new facilities, more charity treatment, more research, etc.
OK, how much do you think the CEO of an entity with revenues of, say, $2.5 billion and 14,000 employees makes? That's the numbers for The Methodist Hospital Group in Houston. The CEO made $3.5 million in 2019. That doesn't sound unreasonable to me, keeping in mind that doctors overall are among the more highly compensated people in the US.
Anyone who thinks employees of non-profits should be compensated less than similar positions in business, simply because it's a non-profit, aren't thinking rationally. The operating surpluses of non-profits are what help pay for new facilities, more charity treatment, more research, etc.
The point that Mr. Vol made is that 'nonprofit' is nothing more than a facade. The label is there to mollify some sensitivities and not really having effects on daily business operations.
But I would say it's a fact of life for all of human existence, not just within a capitalist economic system. Everyone, by human nature, seeks to increase their own personal profitability, regardless of how each actually defines what profit means to them.
Exactly. I worked hard to get where I am financially speaking. A co-worker once told me so what? Everybody works hard. I explained I'm sure everyone does but I worked almost twice as many shifts (or classes I was a adjunct university professor) as he did, including nights and Saturday. I also took financial risks which he didn't and which have paid off for me.
Thus, I am sitting comfortably in retirement. I'm also happy with the current Medicare system and don't want to see any changes.
Now, if some states want to set up their own health care system and cover everyone? Fine. Would be interesting to see what Cal can do.
Those 52,000 Canadians would beg to differ on their status. If not the Fraser Institute, then it would have been someone else who would easily pulled that data. By the way, the article is US News And World Report who cited the Fraser Institute.
A policy brief — titled Flight of the Sick , by the Calgary-based think tank secondstreet.org — says 217,500 Canadians left the country for health care in 2017, according to Statistics Canada. If those travelling with the patients are included in the count, the total rises to 369,700 people.
“One potential solution is for the government to continue to find the publicly available health care system but allow private clinics to provide even more services than what they’re allowed to now,” said Craig.
So according to the Toronto Sun reporting, private health services have limited options and that was enough to prompt plenty of Canadians to go outside Canada for services. Looks like the Canadian model is not perfect, after all. But am sure YOU could find something to gripe about the Toronto Sun as a source.
But my point was not to bash Canada but to challenge those who used Canada as a wholesale template and even then, they deviated from the Canadian model. What would happen if we actually used the real Canadian model as how you showed? Then instead of province/territory, we would have states, and the state level is where Americans are most comfortable when it comes to dealing with the government. If Texans voted to have nothing to do with the government regarding health care, that would have nothing to do with the other 49 states, and that is the way we like it.
Sigh.
I looked up secondstreet.org, and surprise, surprise they are another right wing " think tank ".
The Toronto Sun is a right leaning news source, that gets a rating of " mostly factual ". Hmmmm. So ya, I have a problem with it's reporting and the source.
Regardless I tried to find the numbers that secondstreet quotes, but not surprisingly can only find them in the Toronto Sun article, and one other right wing online blog.
So I went to what they say was the source of those numbers, Stats Canada. Nothing. This by itself isn't conclusive since stats on government pages can be hard to find, but usually when you Google a number and Stats Canada, something will come up. Like I said, nothing I could find.
So I dug deeper ( my coffee even got cold!! ) into the type of surveys Stats Canada does. Found they do National Travel Surverys every quarter. Still can not find one that states how many travel for medical or health reasons. Below is an example of two different quarters in 2019 pre-covid of course.
Health and medical aren't listed, and the category " other " is fairly broad.
Now if there are Stats Canada numbers, especially those that match secondstreets claims, I would love to see them.
My gut tells me secondstreet and their accomplice, the Toronto Sun aren't showing their cards, since they provide no link their Stats Canada claims.
It is also odd, that if they are quoting supposed stats, that in their piece " Flight of the Sick " they would use terms like "The aforementioned estimates " and " The data we obtained provides some rough estimates on the number of Canadians travelling abroad speci cally
for health care,... ".
You either have the numbers or you don't.
Here is the Flight of the Sick article. It is vague, links no resources, and simplistic in some ways.
My gut says that the vast majority of Canadians who get healthcare outside of Canada are snowbirds who happen to need urgent care while in the US for their six months. Most elderly people need some sort of care over six months.
This is what happened to my father in Palm Springs. Thank goodness he had good out of province emergency health insurance. After spending a week in hospital with costs rising, we had him air ambulance back to Vancouver.
Last edited by Natnasci; 01-08-2022 at 01:39 PM..
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