Obamacare

[Lamplighter]

If free markets are best, and "it's unfair and illegal to require hospitals to serve you",
is there agreement to removing their non-profit status so they pay a fair share
of property taxes, and income taxes, and they stop being reimbursed by Medicare ?

And, maybe reconsider their legal rights to put a lien on the patient's home for whatever unpaid bill
the patient incurs out of services and supplies priced at the hospital's discretion of "regular and customary rates"

We might just see how many would survive in the "free market".

In reality, most hospitals and physicians and their medical aides are given a special place in society,
and are not simple retail businesses subject to fair-market competition, freedoms, and restraints.
As such, they have other responsibilities to their community.

So sayth this wacko extermist.

[tw]

Originally Posted by Lamplighter

In reality, most hospitals and physicians and their medical aides are given a special place in society, and are not simple retail businesses subject to fair-market competition, freedoms, and restraints.

Nonsense. Hospitals have gone bankrupt and closed. Hospitals have even conducted massive firings of surgeons due to insufficient funds. At least one of those doctors I know (a heart surgeon) was applying for jobs just like everyone else.

We must decide whether we want socialized medicine (ie UK's National Health Service) or a working free market medicine (ie Affordable Health Care currently being implemented). Otherwise the best solution is to let people die in the streets if they cannot pay.

The current system is why a box of Kleenex must cost maybe $125. Due to a perverted and disfuctional system, openly advocated by many with a poltical agenda. Medical services must charge excessively so that the few pay for all others. And to pay for a bloated bureacracy necessary to make cost redirection work. This is the system that extremists want to protect.

Medicine is not a charity. It is a business. A service just like any other business whose purpose is the advancement of mankind. Even non-profits must balance the books.

[Ibby]

Originally Posted by tw

We must decide whether we want socialized medicine (ie UK's National Health Service) or a working free market medicine (ie Affordable Health Care currently being implemented).

what do you have against single payer?

[tw]

Originally Posted by Ibram

what do you have against single payer?

Where did I say I was against (or for) any solution? Defined was only the problem with multiple directions that can be taken. Your quote did not include all directions.

[Lamplighter]

Originally Posted by tw

Nonsense. Hospitals have gone bankrupt and closed.
Hospitals have even conducted massive firings of surgeons due to insufficient funds.
At least one of those doctors I know (a heart surgeon) was applying for jobs just like everyone else.
<snip>
Medicine is not a charity. It is a business.
A service just like any other business whose purpose is the advancement of mankind.
Even non-profits must balance the books.

"Nonsense" is nonsense. Hospitals and medicine are businesses,
but have special supports and advantages that other forms of business do not have.
Medicine, and especially hospitals, survive in part, on the charity of the public.
As such, they have advantages because certain things (obligations) are expected of them.

What other free-market, service-business gets tax-free properties,
donations from the public, support by religious organizations, volunteers,
governmental reimbursement at rates that vary by location,
grants to employees for working in relatively isolated communities,
county- or volunteer-provided supplemental assistance such as ambulance services, etc.
And in some communities are allowed monopolistic business practices.

Likewise, there is state-support Schools of Medicine and Nursing to train hospital employees
that cause the tax payers far more than what the tuition and student loans.

TW, As you said in another post, "I never said...."
I too never said anything like "no hospital has gone bankrupt".
Of course some have, and physicians and hospital staff have been fired.
I too can give a specific examples of a hospital that fired it's entire
janitorial staff so aides and voluteers would do that work,
and in the same month increased the CEO's salary by $100,000.

I agree with you that Medicine is not a charity, but it can not be a free-market business either.
Of course, they have to balance their books.
But if when a hospital is in the red at the end of the fiscal year,
they can have a campaign asking for public donations to balance their books.
And, they can go to state and federal agencies asking for "emergency funds"
How many truly free-market businesses can compete on such unequal playing fields ?

As said before, hospitals have a special place in society, and as such,
have some special (non-emotional) expectations and obligations to serve the public.

ETA: I forgot to mention "training hospitals"
Some hospitals get special compensations from governments
by providing "training" to medical personnel.
As such, they are often (very often) getting high-trained employees
for below-market salaries.