| What I find interesting is that it is in the 'professions'. I would have thought it was massively wealthy equity owners/holders, hedge fund managers etc.. But yes - if we are paying doctors $1M/year then this will happen. At a nearby hospital in Canada, technology improvements have allowed doctors to diagnose using x-rays a lot faster ... but the Unions have kept pay scale the same. The doctor at the Orangevill hospital earns over a million dollars a year, and he works from home. Swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe - done. Faster tech = more money for the doctor. Savings not passed on to taxpayers. Innovators thought they were improving healthcare, but they really were throwing more surpluses onto the value chain, to be captured by those with the most power: doctors, possibly drug companies. One would think a private system would be more efficient ... but it's probably just as bad in the US. |
The US health care system is not a "private system". It's a mishmash of private and public which combines the worst features of both. The reason we have it in the US is that during WW II, the government controlled wages, so businesses trying to compete for employees had to offer something else as an incentive, and they mainly picked health care benefits. Then, when the war was over and the government stopped controlling wages, instead of going back to competing on wages and dropping employer-provided health benefits, the system of employer-provided health benefits kept on growing. Which now meant it had to be regulated by the government, and so on, and so on...