[forevergreenyon]

I'll venture a guess:

For the human individual person, the interests (the goal) is to care for their health; but amazon is a corporation: for them the real goal is profit, not health.

I'm saying that for the human the incentives should be all about health. the money, the costs are the "obstacle".

On the other hand, for the corporation the incentives are the profit. The health is a cost (or "obstacle").

with this 'frame' in mind I'm saying the incentives are not aligned on their own because the priorities are in conflict.

What's truly the problem here, is how healthy patients aren't 'good' customers of health-services. Then again, this is not a problem unique to Amazon, but they're getting into this 'rodeo'.

[thunky]

I hate to break it to you, but health care is already a for-profit industry.

[Workaccount2]

Right, but there exists enough people in the healthcare space that want an outcome driven approach as opposed to a profit driven approach. You let the parasites in and it moves the needle towards (or more towards) "profit driven".

[woodruffw]

Nobody said that it isn’t. There’s a world of difference between making a profit and driving a bottom line.

[thunky]

I don't understand. Are you saying that existing for-profit health care companies are not attempting to maximize their profits?

[woodruffw]

My doctor doesn’t sell scratch-offs and cigarettes in his waiting room. The profit motive doesn’t require companies to pursue every single avenue of profit; beyond that, medical ethics explicitly forbid some avenues.

[GavinMcG]

Yes. Plenty of medical providers are focused on making a profit while still emphasizing other values, rather than sacrificing them in the name of maximizing profits.

[JohnFen]

Right, which at heart is the primary reason why it's so utterly broken.

[forevergreenyon]

this is unnecessary, of course I know this. It's the reason Americans are now engaging in 'health tourism' a.k.a. going anywhere else in the world to get health care, specially when they know the specific procedure they need.

throwing a capitalistic-optimizing 'machine' into health services has been a huge mistake which is seemingly impossible to fix... this is how systems collapse; when the system is so resistant to fixing its 'problems' that only changing the entirety (or a significantly larger chunk) of the system fixes the problems; but the problems have to be 'life or death' (or 'do-or-die') level for this to kick in.

the biggest issue is that for a level of the system there is no problem, people die anyways. but for another level of the system (the human individual perspective) this IS a problem. if/when the system ignores a level of itself it becomes unstable like it's happening now.