In my experience, it’s often even worse - there often isn’t even any significant profit, at least not in any coherent, centralized way. There are a lot of individual players who can be pointed out, but none of them individually is ‘the problem’.
Absolutely massive amounts of value is destroyed (and patients harmed) just doing super inefficient shitty processes because no one has the ability or incentive to do any better at a systemic level.
Everyone in the system who has a degree of control gets paid very well keeping the wheels turning and consuming cash.
You're 100% on the nose. A big part of it is unnecessary middleman companies leeching at every point in the process.
That's why the profit is so minimal, because there are just so many people providing little to no benefit all taking their piece and spreading it over a bunch of salaries while people get denied treatment
Unfortunately it's starting to happen here too. I'm not sure how much longer I'll be able to make these arguments at the rate we're privatizing and contracting out things... Might end up just as bad here in the long term.
It's the whole reason for the UK tube strikes right now too, and the media is trying to paint the union guy as some Marxist villain when they just want decent wages
The whole thing is totally absurd and short sighted, it's damaging to society. This is why there's more stability in some EU countries. We shouldn't be sacrificing stability for profits, that's a terrible idea. We need a stable populace to make stable progress and have a robust system that lasts for generations
Profiteering leeches resources from a system to benefit a small number of people at the expense of the rest of the healthcare system
In my opinion, please excuse my language, but it's fucking insane