July 24, 2009
Not Everything in America Has to Make a Profit
Why the profit motive doesn’t work for every industry
When your business model depends on a steady stream of sick people, better health care at lower costs isn’t your concern. That’s why real health care reform depends on having a public option to keep private, for-profit health insurance companies and hospitals honest.
Bill Maher, comedian and host of HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, has a great post about why not everything we do in America has to be in the interest of making profits, like providing health care coverage. Here’s an excerpt:
“And finally, there’s health care. It wasn’t that long ago that when a kid broke his leg playing stickball, his parents took him to the local Catholic hospital, the nun put a thermometer in his mouth, the doctor slapped some plaster on his ankle and you were done. The bill was $1.50, plus you got to keep the thermometer.
“But like everything else that’s good and noble in life, some Wall Street wizard decided that hospitals could be big business, so now they’re run by some bean counters in a corporate plaza in Charlotte. In the U.S. today, three giant for-profit conglomerates own close to 600 hospitals and other health care facilities. They’re not hospitals anymore; they’re Jiffy Lubes with bedpans. America’s largest hospital chain, HCA, was founded by the family of Bill Frist, who perfectly represents the Republican attitude toward health care: it’s not a right, it’s a racket. The more people who get sick and need medicine, the higher their profit margins. Which is why they’re always pushing the Jell-O.
“Because medicine is now for-profit we have things like “recision,” where insurance companies hire people to figure out ways to deny you coverage when you get sick, even though you’ve been paying into your plan for years.”
The full post is worth a read.
I agree everything in America is about Profit, and I do not mean Jesus or Mohamed.
Corporate greed has become the new all consuming religion. We sacrifice entire towns to just so a company can make ever greater PROFITS. They lay off and move factories, they destroy one economy so the corp. officers can show a bigger profit so they can get outrageous bonuses.
This country’s infrastructure was built by people power – water, highways and all this has built the system that helped to create this wealth.
I am not against profit but when we are killing people just so some company can make their money that is as low as murder. These companies understand the cost and if they can make money they are willing to let the cost be someone’s lives. So long as they don’t see the faces or know the victims or it not their families
You can bet these same CEO, CFO, COOs and all the higher lever officers and managers have full coverage for themselves and their families.
We cannot claim to be such a great country when so many among us are sick, dying and we have the resources to help. There has to be a better way to govern than the bottom line.
We all can see how the Golden Rule has been replaced with the golden-rule$ of Business. It is no longer right and wrong, it is now will it make us a profit or not, and even will it make us a higher profit. Business has become slave to profit, and this has sold us all back into indentured servitude.
Not everything good can be put in a bank.