Health care providers, insurers, now creating own banks (health care system, companies, politicians)

[ParkTwain]

Is this what these enterprises are supposed to be doing? This seems to me to betray the fact that these companies don't really want to be in healthcare providing business. Where is Washington in all this? Don't the politicians understand that healthcare isn't a normal for-profit kind of business. Its costs are going out of control because in each locale you have a kind of monopoly in place. The patient is very limited as to how far away from home he/she can go to receive services, especially those that take place for a preventive purpose, which should be encouraged because it reduces the need for additional care down the road. So the patient is mostly stuck receiving services in his/her own locale.

Here is the second in a three-part series of articles about the healthcare business in today's L.A. Times:
Health insurers reinvent themselves as money managers - Los Angeles Times

[CarolL]

Originally Posted by ParkTwain

... Don't the politicians understand that healthcare isn't a normal for-profit kind of business....

But you forget: it _is_ a for-profit business. This is America, a capitalist country, and that means anything is fair game to be sold and profited from, including our health and our illness. That's the whole problem with our so-called "health care system." And why we will never have "socialized" health care, even tho we seem to be able to socialize all kinds of other things...Wall Street, for example.