Healthcare for profit?

[DrewBrando]

I noticed a lot of people on the left complain how American Healthcare is for profit.

I’m curious is a single payer healthcare system(Canada) not for profit?

[Tex2002ans]

I am not to sure on the legal status of hospitals (for or non-profit), but they sure as hell aren’t private.

One closely related myth which probably comes along with the “for profit” is thinking that all the hospitals are privately run, and not run by the local government (monopolies).

According to http://mises.org/daily/3793:

In 1992, the Hoover Institution published an essay by Milton Friedman titled “Input and Output in Medical Care,” in which Friedman documented how, at the beginning of the 20th century, about 90% of all American hospitals were private, for-profit enterprises. State and local governments then began taking over the hospital industry. So, by the early 1990s only about 10% of all American hospitals were private, for-profit enterprises. Socialism characterizes at least 90% of all hospitals. Many other hospitals have received government subsidies, and with the subsidies come reams of regulation, making them fascist by definition.

[BrianAnderson]

There’s no such thing as non-for-profit except for things that are unsustainable by nature (i.e. government-run healthcare). People will say the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is not-for-profit because they donate a ton of money to help mosquitos and all that stuff in Africa. But somehow taking the money you earn and putting it into your business isn’t not-for-profit because…? Steve Jobs doesn’t give money to charity. He just uses the money to invest in new technology for Apple, which supplies people jobs. The whole “not-for-profit” mumbo-jumbo is to help people feel better when they can’t balance a budget.

[Tex2002ans]

@Brian Anderson

There’s no such thing as non-for-profit except for things that are unsustainable by nature (i.e. government-run healthcare).

True, but I think he was going more for the legal status granted by the government, not necessarily the economic term of profit.

Now that I think about it, its probably in the same status as schools and retirement homes, “non-profit.”

[abirkmanis]

Just today I noticed Mozilla boasting they are non-profit. Body Shop boast they are against sweatshop (whatever that means). It’s sad when features like that attract customers.

I would rather prefer companies boasting that they do not receive subsidies, or do not serve TSA agents.

[jaybreak]

I could be wrong but I don’t think it’s not-for-profit. Regardless, if the state has its hand in it, it has to be subsidized through taxed profits from somewhere else.

Which brings to light the entire idea of being against profits. Even the biggest state-lover has to be for-profit somehow. Where else is tax revenue going to come from? The parasite needs its host(s) healthy in order to survive.

[Micah71381]

According to Wikipedia:

A nonprofit organization (abbreviated as NPO, also known as a not-for-profit organization) is an organization that does not distribute its surplus funds to owners or shareholders, but instead uses them to help pursue its goals.

You can run a well oiled growing business as an NPO, you just can’t have shareholders/owners that get paid. That being said, the CEO can get a salary (which may be large) but it can’t be based on how well the company is doing. There may also be other restrictions on how much people get paid, though I am not certain.

[DrewBrando]

So it’s more of a loss of profit bussiness?

The way I see is Nonprofit=Loos of Profit

[Micah71381]

A lot of people think “break even” company when they think non-profit but realistically non-profit just means you aren’t paying shareholders. In theory, Microsoft could be a NPO if they just didn’t have any shareholders and they could do just as well (except they would have a lot of difficulty raising initial capital).

As for the US healthcare system, I think it just means that hospitals tend to be run by a board of directors that make money based on how successful the hospital is. As austrians know, this means the hospital will run as efficiently as possible given the government restrictions they are forced to work with but a lot of people mistakenly believe this results in the hospital somehow helping people less than if it were run by the state (or otherwise just trying to break-even).