Being largely for-profit is part of the problem with healthcare in the United States, but plenty of other countries have privatized healthcare that works, Japan being the first that comes to mind.
The difference being that, in the US, the long-term dysfunction of our political system has allowed the regulatory framework for healthcare to be built to service its own industry, rather than the needs of individual citizens or society at large.
As one example, regional hospitals used to band together in groups to bargain collectively when purchasing supplies. This arrangement was formalized, legislated, and then warped, so that rather than the hospitals controlling the organization, it was instead controlled by the suppliers, driving the cost to the patient up, rather than down.
There is no easy solution here, without first fixing our broken political system, and I see no evidence of that happening.
>The difference being that, in the US, the long-term dysfunction of our political system has allowed the regulatory framework for healthcare to be built to service its own industry, rather than the needs of individual citizens or society at large.
You can templateize that statement, inserting pretty much any aspect of life in place of healthcare and it will still be true.
And that's because the US government no longer responds to the needs and wants of the people, but to the needs of corporations and rich people, which happened because of legalized bribery, or the ability to buy a politician's vote with "donation money".
This is why Larry Lessig was right when he kept saying that this is the root cause that needs to be fixed before anything else. People should be supporting such "single issue" politicians that want to reform this system all over, because this is what will fix everything else in the long term, whether it's economic, healthcare, or even social issues (which tend to be turned into issues to distract from the real harm they're doing somewhere else).
>And that's because the US government no longer responds to the needs and wants of the people
I'm an immigrant so I'm not clear it it ever did this: it hasn't in the 20+ years I've been here. Things I hear on the motivations of the founding fathers and the resulting deliberate dysfunctionality they introduced into the system of government suggests to me that the goal was never to respond to the needs and wants of the people.
Why did Larry Lessig not find more support amongst the tech billionaire crowd? His open source policy programs on fixing US democracy ought to be a magnet for hobnobbing billionaires at the very top of Maslow's pyramid.
Why did Larry Lessig not find more support amongst the tech billionaire crowd?
Cynically, because both the current system in general and the current administration in particular is perfect for billionaires. They have everything they could ever want, so why risk that? Don't fix what ain't broken.
The problem with US healthcare isn't profit seeking, it's that years of regulatory technical debt starting with the employer tax deduction totally broke the market and the incentives to control costs are shattered like most things our interests-captive government pays for anymore.
I for one am cheering on the capitalists trying to come and do an end run around this political mess. There's no reason healthcare can't be like buying anything else in a competitive market other than the legal complexity dealing with it and daunting capital required to over come that.
Being largely for-profit is part of the problem with healthcare in the United States, but plenty of other countries have privatized healthcare that works, Japan being the first that comes to mind.
The difference being that, in the US, the long-term dysfunction of our political system has allowed the regulatory framework for healthcare to be built to service its own industry, rather than the needs of individual citizens or society at large.
As one example, regional hospitals used to band together in groups to bargain collectively when purchasing supplies. This arrangement was formalized, legislated, and then warped, so that rather than the hospitals controlling the organization, it was instead controlled by the suppliers, driving the cost to the patient up, rather than down.
There is no easy solution here, without first fixing our broken political system, and I see no evidence of that happening.