| ▲ | tptacek 2 days ago |
| Most American hospitals are nonprofits and all of them operate in the free market. |
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| ▲ | FireBeyond 2 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| It's actually not particularly a free market. Check out Certificates of Need. You need one to open a new hospital in an area. The other existing hospitals in the area get to comment on how it would affect their business and if it would cause them to reduce their investment. This is all framed as "ensuring communities are appropriately served with healthcare capacity," but CoNs were an idea that was conceived by and lobbied for by ... hospital owners. |
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| ▲ | tptacek 2 days ago | parent [-] | | I'm the last person here who would defend provider chains, who I believe are in fact at the root of the problems in the American health care system, and certainly the Certificate of Need system --- which applies variably to about half the states in the US --- is stupid, and does restrict the market (most markets are somewhere on a spectrum between free and unfree). But the alternate problem exists too: hospitals with too many vacant beds, and hospitals shutting down because lack of utilization makes it impossible to pencil out keeping them up and running. That's happening where I am right now. | | |
| ▲ | sudosysgen a day ago | parent [-] | | How is that not just a consequence of market based healtcare? Winners and losers is a natural consequence of market competition, and the instability it brings is natural as well. |
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| ▲ | ranger_danger a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| If by majority you mean 48% |
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| ▲ | ivape 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| What’s your point? |
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| ▲ | tptacek 2 days ago | parent [-] | | That a market setting and the non-profit status of market actors are orthogonal issues. |
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