"This graph depicting
revenue reveals that
the maternity ward is
quite the cost center. It
should be going up and
to the right!
Smithers, why are there
so few pregnancies? We
need more in-patients,
otherwise our overhead
starts eating away at
our profits."
"Well, sir, I suppose
there aren't as many
teen pregnancies as
there used to be, and
with the benefit of
modern procedures, the
pregnancies we do see
are fairly uncomplicated..."
"Uncomplicated?! Why,
everyone knows live
vaginal births are the
devil's causeway. Those
infants can't be as
healthy as these so-
called 'doctors' seem
to believe. See to it
that more tests are
performed. I'm sure we
can find something wrong
with some of these
freeloaders."
You'll just need to have permission before you can get pregnant; cost problem solved (except for the expanding bureaucracy to manage the rules and operations of maternity).
Just trying to point out that human action without profit requires something else to account for the costs; otherwise there is no way to judge comparatively how limited resources should be applied. So if there isn't going to be profit driven activity, what will be the metric for success? If it is "outcomes", then we should start plowing everything we've got into it. Of course, should that mean we stop plowing resources into other endeavors? Do we make a vote of it? A law case?