As one NHS manager put it, without business there would be no buildings, no drugs, no machinery, no beds, no scrubs – just a lot of doctors and nurses in a field in their underwear.
— God Bless the NHS
Healthcare profit is like sex in Victorian times. We pretend it rarely occurs, and we’d be better without it.
But,
- Doctors, nurses, techs, clerks, administrators all get paid; they work for profit.
- Paid bureaucrats profit from running Medicare.
- Even politicians politicate on healthcare to keep their jobs; they profit.
Furthermore, healthcare cannot run without business providing almost everything needed for care. All the technology, medical wonders, and super drugs come from businesses driving innovation. Pharmaceutical company TKM hopes to have an Ebola treatment out soon. Businesses research and develop new products to help patients and to build profits. Patients benefit from businesses that profit.
Medicare is not a charity.
Can Medicare Ever Fail?
Business owners expect a return for their investment in business. Failing companies close. If they cannot serve customers, they go out of business. Owners hopefully salvage some of their investment.
Public organizations spend all their money. They never decrease spending voluntarily. In fact, they put operational savings into more staff or new buildings, even if service doesn’t change. When publicly run organizations fail to serve customers, they do not close. Instead, the state spends more to prop them up.
Only Non-profit Healthcare Cares
Fundamentalists insist that only non-profit healthcare values patients more than money. Only public organizations put patient interests first. They insist that only state run medicine can truly care, having had its motives purified with other people’s money. They imply that Dentists, Orthodontists, Pharmacists and everyone else not covered under Medicare cannot genuinely care about patients.
But in publicly run Medicare:
Patients wait for urgent surgery. The state rations operating room time to save money.
Patients wait for imaging (MRIs etc.). The state turns machines off at 5 pm to save money.
‘Non-profit’ medicine cares about money just as much as ‘for-profit’ healthcare. Non-profit care cuts services to save money. It cannot incentivize productivity or increase budgets by serving more patients. It can only cut, or raise taxes.
Who Cares Most About Patient Service?
The key difference between non-profit and private healthcare is the value each system places on patient service. Non-profit medicine cares comparatively little about service. Without incentive to pursue excellence, it aims for average.
Private healthcare must put patients first or risk insolvency.
Profit prudes impugn those who question ‘non-profit’ healthcare. It’s time to expose the myth. Non-profit zealots enjoy huge profits as healthcare burns up 50% of provincial budgets. Non-profit healthcare would have nothing to offer patients without the proceeds of business endeavours.
Non-profit chauvinists denigrate any care other than their own. It is hypocritical moral supremacy.
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