Being a business means they have to optimize for profit (to at least some non trivial degree), or die.
Many hospitals are run by non profit organizations to help reduce this problem. However even they cannot run at a loss overall for long. Bankruptcy doesn’t help anyone actually provide services, after all.
Gov’t has different incentives - but then care is strongly controlled and limited by public policy, for better or worse.
And an organization that is able to optimize to produce more value than they consume (aka is more profitable) can take more risks, expand better, have more capital to invest in training, equipment, etc, be more competitive in who they hire, and have better and more comfortable facilities if they want.
And being a Dr. can be really miserable sometimes, and the training is also really hard and miserable.
Some (surgeons, esp. plastic surgery) optimize for maximum $$ for misery, usually. Others (pediatrics) optimize for maximum ‘feel goods’ for misery, usually. Most others are somewhere in between.
Either way, if they didn’t want/need the money, they’d be going to medicine sans frontiers or working in rural medicine eh?
Skipping some quibbles,would you agree that some optimizations for profit would lead to business death?
Eg, businesses that cheat and get caught. Businesses that over consume and can no longer produce.Also, that optimization can have the opposite effect. Eg, optimize revenue by showing max ads, with max ads users start to flee. A hospital could optimize for patientoutcomes, and then do better because the patients stay around.
This overall though assumes that free market principles work in healthcare. Those principles tend to assume consumer choice.
Many hospitals are run by non profit organizations to help reduce this problem. However even they cannot run at a loss overall for long. Bankruptcy doesn’t help anyone actually provide services, after all.
Gov’t has different incentives - but then care is strongly controlled and limited by public policy, for better or worse.
And an organization that is able to optimize to produce more value than they consume (aka is more profitable) can take more risks, expand better, have more capital to invest in training, equipment, etc, be more competitive in who they hire, and have better and more comfortable facilities if they want.
And being a Dr. can be really miserable sometimes, and the training is also really hard and miserable.
Some (surgeons, esp. plastic surgery) optimize for maximum $$ for misery, usually. Others (pediatrics) optimize for maximum ‘feel goods’ for misery, usually. Most others are somewhere in between.
Either way, if they didn’t want/need the money, they’d be going to medicine sans frontiers or working in rural medicine eh?