[lbo-talk] For-profit medicine

Shane Mage shmage at pipeline.com
Thu May 17 15:08:24 PDT 2012


On May 17, 2012, at 3:33 PM, Wojtek S wrote:


> [WS:] It seems that public insurance (such as Medicaid) is
> insufficient to prevent this kind of abuse. The root of the problem
> is private service delivery - perhaps more so than private insurance.
> According to a recent propaganda poster on the DC Metro, inscos
> profits account for less than 5% of all medical cost - hospital and
> doctor bills account for some 80 percent and drugs for 11% if memory
> serves.

A moment's analysis will tell you that this is just a falsehood (third in the trinity of lies, damn lies, statistics). Much of health care is paid for by govt. programs (Medicare, Medicaid, Veterans); "profits" excludes the parasitism embodied in executive and management salaries; a lot of the cost borne by physicians etc. is imposed by Inc. Co. paperwork./


>
> So the solution is the development of a public health care *delivery*
> system - rather than a public health insurance. And I mean public,
> not just "nonprofit" - since most US hospitals are "nonprofit" i.e.
> tax exempt.

That's what the propaganda is telling you to believe. For almost all Americans a "public health care *delivery* system" is irretrievably labeled "socialized medicine," and that meme is ideologically poisonous.

Medicare For All!!!

Shane Mage

This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it

always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire,

kindling in measures and going out in measures.

Herakleitos of Ephesos



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