[JumpCrisscross]

> Private entities need to maintain margins and will cut service to maintain them

This is a false dichotomy. Public v private is so often framed as a political agency versus free-market bonanza. In reality, we have independent agencies and public-private partnerships. But on the private side, we also co-operatives, a model which seems well-suited for community hospitals.

[Arn_Thor]

PPPs are often a mirage. As long as there's a private actor involved, some of the input (money) will be siphoned off as profits. That's the height of inefficiency. Where the alternative is a competent, responsive and accountable government, the government will allocate the resources more effectively, and all "inefficiency" goes into working people's pockets. This is not always practical, for example in situations where only private businesses have highly specialized knowledge, but for basic infrastructure the private sector offers nothing the government couldn't do just as well.

[phkahler]

Or how about just non-profit? Regardless of the options, private equity seems like the worst one and should probably be illegal.

Taking "profit" from keeping people "not dead" seems as close to extortion as you can get without actually being so.

[JumpCrisscross]

> how about just non-profit?

“If the public health goal is to improve hospital care, then focusing on things like for-profit or nonprofit status is a distraction” [1].

> Taking "profit" from keeping people "not dead" seems as close to extortion

Modern medicine is expensive. For profit or not, expenses must be covered.

We’re better off incentivising people to become doctors and nurses and pharmaceutical researchers. The problem is all the nonsense being eaten up in administration, administration largely paid for by price obfuscation.

[1] https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/hospitals-c...

[phkahler]

>> “If the public health goal is to improve hospital care, then focusing on things like for-profit or nonprofit status is a distraction”

Fair enough. So let's just ban for-profit healthcare so we can stop being distracted by that whole thing.

[albert180]

Still you manage to waste 10% on Administrative Expenses and have the worst health outcomes in G7 but the highest expenses. Maybe learn a thing or two from northern Europe which has 100% public healthcare delivery

[giantrobot]

> Modern medicine is expensive. For profit or not, expenses must be covered.

There's a ton of bullshit that goes into "medical expenses" in the US. Not the least of which is the inability for people to pay for care and end up in the ER for urgent non-emergency services because ER services are required to be provided. Hospitals need to foot the costs of those people that literally can't pay. Those costs get amortized over every other service (plus plain old margin and gauging) increasing the overall costs.

Besides eliminating unpaid emergency service public health coverage would let people get regular medical care without plunging into debt so they'd go sooner before conditions become acute. Private insurance could even still exist, but as a premium add-on to statutory coverage.

More doctors and nurses is just supply side economics applied to healthcare. Those jobs will appear naturally with the entire population completely covered. Rural hospitals could even open back up since they'd be serving people with actual coverage.